Defense is Paper-Thin
by Diane Langley
Summary: The Mother of All Monsters is out of Purgatory, and she wants her children to follow her. After saving the world once already, Sam and Dean are not willing to let one monster, no matter how big and bad, mess it up. When Eve heads to Mystic Falls to bring some of her Original children in line, the Winchesters end up in a war of a whole different kind. (SPN Season 6; TVD Season 3)
1. Chapter I

**AN:** In playing with the timelines to make this story work, I had to take some liberties. In terms of _Supernatural_ , this story takes place during Season 6 (but loosely). For the purposes of this slightly AU tale, Sam is recently returned from his soullessness, but the Campbells are a non-factor and Cas is not working with Crowley.

In terms of _The Vampire Diaries_ , this story takes place during Season 3 (but loosely). Klaus has already come to town, compelled Stefan to turn off his humanity, and ultimately Stefan had returned to normal. Elena is human. The hybrids exist, and Tyler is one of them. The Mikaelsons are still in town, but Esther has not been brought back or returned.

In terms of lore, we will be using _The Vampire Diaries_ ' version of vampires, not the _Supernatural_ version. It just makes more sense for this story.

If a change makes sense, it is probably intentional.

The title is from the song "Vindicated" by Dashboard Confessional.

X

 _Human nature is to simply assume that the worst thing imaginable will never happen to you._

 _A forest fire? You won't lose your house in one. Starvation? You will always have enough to eat. Violent death? You'll go quietly in your sleep._

 _Perhaps the shift in that kind of thinking is the most profound change affected by a brush with the supernatural. Suddenly the world is infinitely broader, deeper, and more complicated than you could have ever imagined, and suddenly, the reality of all the worst things imaginable out there is paralyzing._

X

Singer Salvage Yard stretched out for several acres. The property was a mix of woods, dilapidated buildings, and rusty, long-forsaken cars, but it was also warmed by the pale yellow South Dakota sun and blessed by crisp breezes. Sam Winchester sat on the hood of an old '83 Ford truck. His jacket was a little tighter on his frame than it had been last time he had worn it. The creature living in his body – for that was how Sam had to think of himself without a soul – must have had a propensity for working out. He supposed the joy of research was something lost on a soulless human. He lifted his face to the sun, feeling its heat. Dean would laugh him out of the scrapyard if he knew that his brother was just appreciating how damn good it felt to be human. He was smelling grass, tasting cool, fresh air, and touching sun-warmed metal.

The world was in peril again. Ending the Apocalypse had only been the start to saving it. What had felt so final only a year ago was only another adventure in the Winchester gospel, if such a thing was still to be written. Now the threat was different. The Earth would not be leveled. Nature would still sing birdsong and grow sweet, ripe berries, but humans would no longer exist to appreciate it. This time, the mother of all monsters ("the literal mother..." Dean had joked, waggling his eyebrows) was knocking on the door, but she was not asking politely to be let in. She was demanding.

"Sam!" Sam couldn't help but smile at the bellow. Dean had never met a subtlety he liked. "Sam, I got you a burger! It's got mushrooms and some green shit on it."

"Green shit," Sam muttered before raising his voice, "Bring it over here!"

After a few seconds, Dean's head appeared above the cars. He raised his arm, showing off a white bag with a splotchy grease stain showing through it. It was his idea of gourmet, and he brought it over, plopping it on the hood of the car and climbing up beside Sam. They ate in relative silence. Sam noticed that the green shit on his burger was made up of spinach and spring greens and that the terriyaki sauce on the mushrooms was pretty darn good. He savored each bite, again appreciating the little things.

"Bobby's taking a shower. Then I figure we'll keep reading news reports and looking for cases. Big ones," Dean licked a blob of mayonnaise from his chin.

"You think that's how we'll find her?" Sam replied, doubful.

"Her," Dean snorted. "Yeah, if assigning a gender to the bitch makes any sense."

"It's been weeks. No sign of her anywhere. There are monsters out there, but they don't seem to be... doing anything out of the ordinary," He could not help but chuckle.

"What?"

"Never thought I'd say that. 'Monsters seem ordinary' and all."

"Yeah. Hilarious. This whole situation is a regular chucklefest."

"Can't be brooding all the time."

They crumpled up their trash wrappers and started back towards the house. Dean tossed the bag towards a trash barrel, missed, and kept walking. Sam managed to take two steps forward before all the Don't Litter signs he had seen his whole life crowded his mind. He turned around, picked up the bag, and placed it in the trashcan. Catching up to Dean only took two strides. They pushed open the door and headed inside.

Bobby's house was never a paragon of tidiness, but today it was torn apart six ways to Sunday. Every bookshelf was empty. The books were on the couch, on the end table, on the desk, on the floor, open to various percentages before abandoned, with different degrees of beer bottles and liquor glasses around them. Loose papers had managed to wiggle their way free from file folders, trailing their way between rooms. Research was not going so well, but it had been going steadily for days. They were no closer to figuring out how to kill – or trap or maim or destroy – Eve than they had been when they first discovered her rise out of Purgatory. Bobby's shower had been the first break for luxury in 36 hours.

Sam accepted the beer bottle his brother put in his hand just as Bobby rounded the corner. He was back in real clothes, of course, but he only wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and a pair of grey wool socks. The look was so casual, without jacket or boots that made him ready to go at a moment's notice, that it created a false sense of domesticity. For a second, Sam imagined what it would be like to be a man visiting his father. Maybe here for a weekend fishing trip. He knew that Bobby and Dean neither one could imagine things like that. They were concrete people, absolute in their acceptance of reality, but that was not Sam. He could see Dean as a mechanic, hard-drinking maybe but the life of a party, and himself as a... well, lawyer no longer seemed appropriate, but maybe he could be an investigator, a real detective. They would still be different, but they could also still be brothers the way brothers were meant to be. And Bobby could smile every time the fish were biting.

"Sam?" Bobby's voice was gruff.

"Oh shit. Sorry. What were you saying?" Sam shook his head of his thoughts. He needed to focus. After being put back into his body, he had been drifting off more and more, imagining how different their lives could have been. After miraculously stopping the Apocalypse and somehow surviving it, they deserved the chance to put their feet up and have normalcy. He resented that they were still the job.

"I don't know, cupcake. Only that I got a lead on where we might find Eve. Think that might interest you?" Bobby had a facial expression that could have withered fresh spring flowers, but Sam was used to that.

"Yeah, I' m listening, I'm listening. Where's the lead?"

Bobby still looked frustrated, skulking around behind his desk and beginning to shuffle through papers. Dean watched him from the side of the room, leaned back against the doorframe. He tilted his beer up, took a long drink, and then looked back at Sam.

"Bobby got a call today from some hunter in Virginia I've never heard of," Dean remarked, raising an eyebrow.

"Who?"

Bobby chimed back in. "A good guy. He got into the business a couple year's back when his wife was killed by a vamp."

"Some amateur," Dean also continued.

"His name's Ric, and he says he's got some weird stuff happening out his way. He called for information."

Sam could have cut the tension between the two of them. He wasn't sure why Dean was being a dick, but he had his guesses. They didn't have much faith in other hunters these days, not after everything they had been through, but Bobby still had faith in the old ways. He had spent most of his life building and maintaining the network of hunters across this nation; it was thanks to him that information passed the way it did. If hunters no longer could rely on the super information highway through Bobby Singer's, then Bobby had very little purpose left, and he was from the old school where you shot a dog who had gotten crippled. He didn't want to lose his purpose.

"What did he want information about?" Sam intermediated, looking from man to man, waiting to see which one would be his source.

Dean waved his arm, still holding his beer, towards Bobby, who gruffly continued, "Ric says people in his town are starting to hear voices, calling them to kill, and that they're having trouble fighting it."

"Sounds... pleasant." Sam swallowed sharply.

"Yeah, a real walk in the park. He wanted to know what could cause something like that because they're all hearing the same voice, at the same times, saying 'she is coming'. He wanted me to look in my books and get back to him with an answer," Bobby held up a book that would be useless.

"But you think it's Eve," Sam said.

"I think I don't believe in the kind of frickin' coincidence where something like that happens at the same time as the mother of all monsters rising out of Purgatory."

"You don't agree?" Sam looked at Dean now. Dean shook his head.

"She isn't interested in humans. This sounds like demons or ghost posession or something else that we could send someone more local after. Or better yet, we could accept this Ric's statement that he needs information, not help. If he wants to be a hunter, the training wheels have to come off sometime."

"He sounded real scared, and besides, there's no demonic omens and he couldn't point to any recent deaths in his town. You boys should head that way."

"Alright, Bobby, alright. We'll load up and head out. Let us both shower first." Dean acquiesced for both brothers. Sam didn't mind; there was a time not that long ago where he would have felt the urge to rebel against his older brother's rule, but now he had to acknowledge that he took some comfort in knowing that someone else wanted to make the decisions in times like this. Plus he already agreed with Bobby before Dean came to that conclusion himself. The end result was mostly the same between the two of them these days.

"I'll throw together sandwiches for the road. I've got a ziploc of bacon in the fridge." Bobby shuffled his way into the kitchen, just starting to show signs of aging in his walk.

Sam headed upstairs and took a quick shower while Dean used the downstairs shower. When he got out, he brushed his teeth again. It felt good to get the funk of terriyaki and beer out of his mouth. As he got dressed, he rolled his clean clothes – which Bobby and Dean had washed at some point this week while he was knee-deep in reading – and packed them into his bag. Two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, two clean tee shirts, a flannel shirt, and a pair of jeans rolled into a tight package at the edge of his backpack. Most of his items stayed there all the time, like a toothbrush and a phone charger, because here at Bobby's, he had a toothbrush in the holder by the sink. It was the closest thing he had ever had to home. Even as a kid, on the rare weekend they had gotten to be here, he had been able to leave things here, knowing they would be safe until his return.

Clean, packed, and smelling better than he probably would for weeks, Sam walked down the stairs.

"Where exactly are we going again?" Dean was seated at the kitchen table, chair pushed back, as he put on his boots and laced them up. He pulled the laces tight at each pair of eyelets, the motion so practiced he didn't have to look. Sam noticed Bobby was still assembling sandwiches for his boys and that Cas was now in the kitchen. The angel stood ramrod straight, as always, right in the center of the room. It was the little things like that continually setting him apart from humans. Humans drifted to corners. They liked to lean on walls, slump a little against the fridge, balance their arms on the back of a chair. When Cas came into a room, he always felt comfortable standing dead center. Sam supposed it was an angel thing.

"Mystic Falls, Virginia," Bobby replied. He dropped a sandwich and a handful of chips into one brown paper bag.

" _Mystic_ Falls? Who names these frickin' places?" Dean muttered as he glanced up at Sam. "Good. You're ready. We've got 1500 miles to drive."

"Is Cas coming?" Sam walked over to grab one of the bags Bobby had prepared and stow it in his backpack where Dean couldn't get it.

"No. Cas is still having trouble with the God Squad," Dean answered. He stood up, stretched his back out, and strated toward the door. "He just came down to get up to speed with where we're going. For once, he answered when I prayed."

Castiel turned his bright blue gaze to Sam, something he had always found unnverving. Dean always seemed so capable of forgetting that Cas was not human, but Sam was in constant awe of that fact. He could never quite see all three of them as equals. Without a doubt, he himself stood apart from the other two. His very psyche had touched levels of darkness they could never imagine. His eyes had been black while his heart pumped demon blood with every beat, and he had contained Lucifer inside him, literally seen the world through the devil's eyes. How could an angel and the Righteous Man in Hell relate to things like that?

"The angels are still at war. The factions are splintering amongst themselves. Heaven is becoming..." Cas paused.

"Hell?" Dean interrupted.

Cas shot him a look before turning back to Sam and continuing, "A place of danger and betrayal. No one knows who to trust or who to look towards. We need a god."

"A god?" Sam felt his shoulders stiffen instantly at the word choice. "Not God? A god?"

"God does not seem to care what happens to his warriors." There was bitterness in Cas's tone, little hint of the reverence he had once touted.

"I'm sorry, Cas," Sam replied.

"You did not do it," Cas answered, puzzled.

"It's just something people say, Cas," Dean sounded exasperated. The conversation trailed on and then off. After the mutual update had passed, Castiel disappeared, popping back up to Heaven. The Winchester boys hugged Bobby goodbye, that brief shoulder-to-shoulder touch that bespoke family, double-checked the trunk of the Impala, and climbed in.

Dean cranked up "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" as they pulled out in a cloud of dust.

X

Rain battered down on the roof of the Gilbert house; this storm had rolled in two days ago, and it had not slowed down a bit. Normal storms had lulls, periods where the precipitation became drizzle, no thunder could be heard, and the clouds even seemed a bit lighter. But in two days, this weather event had not deviated from its torrent. Elena sat on the porch swing, simply because it felt good to be outside, and rocked back and forth slowly. The warm September air was little comfort with everything that had been going on around town, and the book on her lap had been open to the same page for 30 minutes. Her thoughts pinged inside of her skull like the steel ball in a pinball machine.

A week ago, they had been at the Grille, and it had seemed almost... normal. Stefan had actually been playing pool with Tyler; he may have even laughed once or twice. Caroline had put on a black top that tied behind the neck with a big bow and a neckline that dropped too low, showcasing a perfect set of cleavage as she danced along to the music. Hell hath no fury like Caroline Forbes scorned, and she had been punishing Tyler for their breakup with short skirts, flirty eyes, and low-cut shirts for weeks. Elena and Bonnie had been seated on stools behind the pool table, watching and chatting. Across the Grille, Damon had been seated at the bar, the only one of legal drinking age, and in memory, even Elena had to admit that his activity had been watching her. When she recalled the image now, she could still see his hot eyes watching her every move, measuring her happiness through their filter. For a few minutes, they had not been three vampires, a hybrid, a witch, and a human; they had simply been a group of friends.

It had been mid-conversation when all of a sudden, Stefan had whiffed a shot. He missed so badly the pool cue shot out of his hand and across the felt. It bumped once and clattered to the floor. Bonnie and Elena had laughed until his face went serious. "Did you hear that?" He had demanded. At that moment, Caroline had come flying towards him, grabbed his shoulders, and repeated the same question back to him. At the bar, Damon had frozen too, snapping his gaze to his brother.

Caroline, Stefan, and Damon all claimed to be hearing a voice inside their head ("Voices?" Bonnie had tried to clarify only to be corrected that it was a single voice). The voice told them, "I am coming. Make ready. Feed. Feast. I am coming," and other iterations on the same terrible orders. But even once they left the Grille and gathered at the Salvatores, they found more questions than answers in their conversations. Why couldn't Tyler hear the voice? Who was coming? Why was it so hard to fight? Stefan had been shaking from the moment he heard the voice, hands quaking like the addict that he was.

Elena shook her head to clear her mind of the memory. Now their focus was research. The dusty tome in her hands right now was titled _Pagan Clairvoyants_ , and so far, it outlined concepts from witch speak to human telepathy but nothing that seemed to speak the problem in their town. She was reading every book Ric had dropped off, though, and Bonnie was doing the same thing at her house. Stefan and Damon had gotten out of town to go talk to some witches somewhere in North Carolina, both of them rattled, though they wouldn't admit it. Caroline was in bed, acting for all the world as if she could cure whatever this was with a bowl of soup and a positive attitude ("It's not the flu, Barbie," Damon had groused).

Sitting here in this rain, Elena felt more alone than she had in months. Ever since she had gotten tangled up with the Salvatore boys, she had been tailed, shadowed, and watched. Sometimes it was terrifying, and sometimes it was all that made her feel safe. Right now, though, she extended her rubber black boots in front of her and swung the swing a little harder.

Twin headlights came down the road, moving at the slow pace of someone reading street addresses, and then turned down her driveway. She didn't recognize the car, and her stomach seized up in a sudden knot. Strangers were not a good omen in a place like Mystic Falls. Through the rain and the rushing windshield wipers, it was impossible for any human to see who was in the vehicle, but the driver cut the car off. Elena looked around the porch, cursing herself for not having something out here to use to defend herself. When was she ever going to learn her lesson?

The driver of the car unfolded out into the rain. He was tall and broad-shouldered under a long black coat, but that was all she could see before a passenger got out as well. The driver had seemed tall until this passenger got out. He was one of the tallest men Elena had ever seen in person, shaggy-haired and also broad-shouldered. The pair of them walked briskly towards the porch, seemingly unfazed by the pounding rain. Once they cleared the rain and stepped under the overhang, the men were more clearly visible. Though it was completely irrational, Elena felt a surge of comfort at the sight of them. That, in and of itself, scared her more than the fear she should have been feeling. The shorter man was handsome with his short brown hair, serious eyes, and scruffy beard around a surprisingly soft mouth while the taller man was all lean angles and kindness, with brown-hair plastered to the sides of his neck by the heavy rain.

"Hello ma'am," the driver spoke first. His tone was gruff, informal. As he spoke, he reached up, putting his thumb and forefinger to his temple, and pulled down, squeegeeing the dripping water from his face. "We're looking for Rick Saltzman."

Her eyes widened. "You're looking for Alaric?"

"Alaric?" The driver looked surprised now. He turned to the passenger and muttered, "That's a weird name."

"That's Ric Saltzman's whole first name. Why are you looking for him?" She felt suspicious now.

"We have business with him," the passenger spoke this time. His voice was different, smoother and almost soothing. He sounded like someone who could have counseled the grieving and comforted the bullied. "Is this where he lives?"

Elena hesitated but saw no way around answering the question. "Yes."

The two men exchanged a long glance before finally the taller of the two spoke again. "He called us about a... problem he was having here in town. Are you familiar with the problem?"

Now she sucked in a deep breath that stuck in her throat. Ric had been carefully calling in favors for weeks, using only trusted resources and cautious wording. He needed information from experts, but he needed no one's interest too aroused because if anyone followed the bread crumbs to Mystic Falls, he or she would find a town unlike any other. No paranormal or occult expert would be willing to pass up an opportunity to study the denizens of this not-so-idyllic town, and no self-proclaimed monster hunters would be able to bear knowing such a nest of the supernatural existed. Judging from the looks of these two men, even with their sharp-looking suits under their long jackets... Elena doubted that they were academics looking to take good notes. She wished Ric were here to tell her what answer she should be giving. Finally, she decided on the affirmative.

"Yes, I am. Wait here on the porch, and I will go in and call him to let him know you're here. What are your names again?" She added the 'again' hoping it might make them forget that they had not offered names in the first place. She had no such luck.

"We didn't say. You can tell Ric that Bobby Singer sent us."

"Bobby Singer. Got it." Relief felt warm and soothing when she realized they were not going to ask to be let inside; she never let anyone inside these days until she was certain. Once she had seen the power of the threshold holding back an angry vampire, she would forever appreciate its promise of protection. She slipped inside and back through the house to the kitchen where she knew her call would not be overheard. Then she dialed Ric and waited nervously.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up," she muttered into the receiver. Then she heard the baritone hello of her favorite history teacher on the other end.

"Ric, thank God. Listen, there's two men here to see you," she hated how anxious she sounded. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window behind the kitchen sink. Even to her own eyes, she looked pale and nervous. "They say that Bobby Singer sent them."

"Bobby? Shit. I told him I just needed information. If Bobby's sent them, they must be John Winchester's boys," Alaric breathed in on the other end, and a few seconds ticked by. Elena could imagine the face he was making, chin jutted out slightly and frown creasing. "That's not good."

"Why not?"

"They're hunters. You know, kill-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night hunters. Things like Caroline and Tyler and..."

"And Damon," she added in a breath, feeling guilty even as she did so that she had said his name first. He was the wrong brother.

"Yeah, and Damon and Stefan."

"Well, what do I do with them?"

"Invite them in. Give them a soda or a beer or a fifth of whiskey or whatever their poison is, and I'll be there soon to talk to them. They're not dangerous. At least not to us. I'm just at the grocery store, so stall for a few."

Elena laughed as they exchanged quick goodbyes. They were desperately facing down another peril; their friends were in danger again, hearing unknown voices and feeling a bloodlust they could not explain, but she and Alaric still had to go on milk runs. It was the curse and the joy of being human. Thinking of milk made her think of the way her brother used to down a whole gallon by himself some days; she missed Jeremy so fiercely she clenched her fingers into her palms. She knew that sending him to Denver was the right choice. When he called, he was happy, settled, friendly. He was neither the sluggish, drugged Jeremy of after their parents' death or the fearful, desperate Jeremy of supernatural knowledge. He was free.

She walked back out to the front door and opened it. The two men were still standing there, comfortable in their silence.

"I'm sorry about that," she swung the door open wider. "Please come in. Alaric says he'll be home in just a few minutes. I'm Elena Gilbert."

The taller one nodded. "Hi Elena. I'm Sam, and this is my brother, Dean."

"Well, Sam and Dean, come on in."

She pulled the door closed behind them and ushered them to the living room, whispering a silent prayer that the Salvatore boys would not get back into town to check on her before Ric came home. She doubted they would take kindly to the two broad-shouldered vampire-hunters now sitting on her sofa.

X

Reuniting his family was only a small part of Klaus's purpose in Mystic Falls. His larger purpose was to create a home for himself, and the uniqueness of this small town was that a percentage of its humans knew about vampires. For him, that presented a more appealing challenge than carving out a role amongst the ignorant. He preferred to use thousands of years of connections and wealth to influence those whose morals asked them to have higher standards. It was simply more fun. Why just recently, he had met with Mayor Lockwood to talk over the town's need for park renovations. These small towns loved their pet projects. That love made his sphere of influence easy to grow. A hospital wing here, some park benches there... before he knew it, he would be the town's most beloved star.

Today, though, he was forced to handle more domestic problems. His brother, Elijah, was pacing the floor of his stately home ten miles outside of Mystic Falls. The hardwood floors were polished to a gleam under the hands of a compelled housemaid; she had scrubbed until her fingers bled, but it was entirely worth it. The luster was almost enough to distract from Elijah's vicious stride back and forth. Against the backdrop of the nasty storm outside, Elijah looked like a figure from an old movie, pacing in front of a broad window and catacylsmic lightning.

"Niklaus, I am having difficulties controlling myself."

It was a statement Klaus could never have anticipated hearing from his brother, eternally cool and composed. Elijah had none of his younger brother's nasty temper. All of his actions came from a place of supreme collection.

"The voice still?" Klaus was not pacing but seated on the expensive white couch. He ran a finger along its seam, appreciating the luxury of daring to own something so pale in a house where blood was so apt to splash.

"She is getting louder, more insistent. She says she is coming." Elijah's suit was immaculate, well-cut and perfectly tailored. Not a hair on his head was out of place by even an inch. His voice even retained its deep, melodic calm. Yet his eyes were wide as he made this statement, rimmed ever-so-slightly in red.

"I do not know what magic this voice works as. It is undoubtedly some witch trying to have her fun, and when I find her, I will end her. However, you cannot let it affect you so in the meantime. It is only a voice," Klaus responded, crossing one leg over the other and looking up at the walls. He had two bare spaces that needed work, but inspiration was loathe to come to him. He felt no shame in acknowledging that Caroline Forbes was his muse currently; he had experienced many dalliances and several true romances over his centuries, and she was a beauty and wit worthy of another. Her reluctance, as opposed to attraction to him, was not surprising considering her belief in her own morality. What he would never admit to anyone was that he was rattled by her belief in _his_ morality, something he had certainly never encountered before. He toyed with the idea of painting Elijah's shoes tapping down on the immaculate floors – might be an intriguing juxtaposition of class and stress.

Elijah stopped pacing and walked to the couch to take a seat beside his brother. "No. You don't understand because you cannot hear it. This is not a witch or some sort of magic. Klaus," His tone was grave. "I think it may be God."

Klaus actually snorted. "There is no God. If there were, He would have smited us long ago. Or rather," His lips curved into a smile. "He would have tried."

"The voice is not angry. It is..." Elijah trailed off.

"I thought you said it wanted you to give in to the bloodlust and kill freely."

"It does. _She_ does," Elijah corrected. Again, his brother was caught off-guard by how uncharacteristic this action was. It was a level of respect and courtesy usually only reserved for family and friends. "But her voice... I think she wants us to be happy."

"Us?"

"Yes. I do not... I do not understand fully," Elijah closed his eyes. "But, Klaus, she is coming. Whomever she is, she is coming."


	2. Chapter II

Blood ran down Castiel's chin in one single line, dripping from some unseen wound inside his mouth. The vast expanse of Heaven served as a battlefield; today alone, Castiel had been a wolf, an orca, and now human again, forced into the form of the areas of Heaven he traversed. Only near to the heart of God, inside the Pearly Gates themselves, did angels take their true form. In the rest of Heaven, they traipsed about in the form that made sense for the landscape. In their own areas, they chose human form; most would never have admitted it, but there was comfort to taking the form that God had supposedly made in his own image. Angels, rather than the lesser beings, should have been the ones modeled after their Father. Cas had to acknowledge that he had also enjoyed wolf form, appreciating the swift surety of four paws on snow during the chase.

Now he was in an elderly English professor's heaven. The space was a massive library, with vaulted ceilings and bookshelves stacked as high as a human would deem safe. He had seen neither the human nor the angels who hunted him. They were followers of Raphael, mighty warriors, and their pursuit was taking its toll on Castiel. The blood running from his mouth was his own; angels carried the same life force as their father's later creations. He looked up at the bookshelves, wondering where they could be. If he had shaken them two heavens over, he should find a hiding place here, but if he had not, every moment he stood still could spell his death.

A book suddenly toppled off the shelf and fell open, pages whispering and turning as if there were a mighty wind.

 _Damn it, Cas. Where are you?_ Dean Winchester was praying again, and in Heaven, prayers manifested not as voices in angels' minds but as physical parts of the space around them. Those fluttering book pages were the result of the prayer, a prayer that was genuinely audible in the environment around them. Castiel felt very tempted to utter a bit of profanity he had heard his friends use in moments like this. Dean's voice reverberated in the previously silent library.

Alerted by the prayer, two angels suddenly advanced through the backside of the library, carrying their blades in proper fighting stance. One was Netzach, leader of principalities but follower of Raphael, and the other was Ermiel, a foot soldier desperate for an opportunity to make a name for himself. Netzach wore the form of a man in his twenties, broad and fit, and Ermiel wore an older gentleman with a smile that did not reach his eyes. In true winged combat, Castiel's particular skill set would have made him the dominant angel even against two of them, but in human form, Castiel had spent much time as Cas, a friend and genuine companion to humans. His use of this form for combat against other angels, under Heaven's rules, had not happened in many decades. To be rusty in a moment like this could spell death.

"Give up, Castiel. We do not want to be forced to hurt our brother," Netzach spoke urgently, advancing even as he lied about a desire for peace. Cas had seen enough burnt-out wing trails scattered across the heavens of late to believe for a moment that Raphael had given orders for capture alive.

"Then drop your blade and tell Raphael to stop his plan to create a Heaven as bloodthirsty as Hell." Cas took a step backwards. His blade was also extended in front of him.

 _Cas, we need help._ The book pages on the floor fluttered out Dean's voice again. Ermiel approached the book and stomped his foot down on the cover, pinning it still.

"Your pet seems to be calling for you, Castiel," Ermiel mocked.

"Dean Winchester is no one's pet."

"Oh," Netzach spat out his words venomously. Ermiel stepped off of the book and both angels came closer again, moving in the slow arcs of predators. "That's true, Ermiel. You misspoke. If anything, it is Castiel who is the human's pet."

Embarrassment flushed through Castiel, warming even his extremities. "Enough."

"You are right. It is enough. You cannot win this war, Castiel. Raphael is closer to victory than many of us ever dreamed possible. It is only a matter of time before he seals..." He was interrupted by sudden chaos.

Instantly, a terrible snapping sound crackled through the air, and the bookshelves of the library rooms started to slam off of the walls, splitting in halves. Book pages, wrested from their spines by the cosmic shaking, floated in the air like snow. Ermiel and Netzach looked up and at each other, and in an instant, they blurred out of vision, moving out to another heaven and leaving this one behind.

"What is..." Cas questioned just as the ground beneath him split wide open and spilt him out the bottom into darkness. He fell, gravity-less, the feeling like fire on his skin. He heard Dean's voice again, but this time, the voice was audible only inside his head. It was this distinction that brought Cas to the realization that he was no longer in Heaven.

Having penetrated the filmy layer that separated the Earth from the greater cosmos, it was less work to reroute himself, to simply disappear and reappear where he was being requested. He popped into form in a motel room – something that did not surprise him at all – to see Dean sitting on the edge of a bed. Only the backside of his tailbone seemed to hold him on the bed, the rest of his weight leant forward with his elbows on his knees. Dean looked up, startled, but his face smoothed back over instantly. Cas looked around for Sam.

"He's not here. He went to gas up the car and get food," Dean had a way of correctly determining what Cas was thinking before he could think it. Unnerving might not even be a strong enough word for it. "What happened to you?"

Castiel turned his head sideways to see himself in the mirror. His trenchcoat was streaked with the dirt of the forest he had run as a wolf, his human hair stuck out at odd angles, crusted with the salt from the ocean he had swum as an orca, and the blood was dried on his chin from his more human malady. Most surprising were his eyes. They were bloodshot, the shade of red so violent at the corners that he looked wild. He blinked twice but saw no change in their status.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Dean tilted his head sideways, speaking in the flat, sarcastic tone he rarely relaxed.

"I was chased by two members of Raphael's faction. I was cornered when the ground of the heaven split, and I fell."

"Are you saying Heaven broke?"

Castiel could hear the subtle difference in pronunciation that humans were unable to notice. They were forced to alter it in their writing, emphasizing visually what their brains were not nuanced enough to hear.

"Not Heaven. It was a heaven. It belonged to a literature professor."

Dean stood up and walked to the window, agitated. "And it split, and you fell?"

"I rerouted myself here rather than crashing to Earth."

"How?"

"You prayed for me." Castiel spoke it as fact, but the sudden tensing of Dean's shoulders suggested it should not be said so easily. "Enochian symbols on your ribs do not work when you are praying."

"I didn't pray," Dean groused, turning away and pushing the curtain open for a moment. Castiel remembered the mockery of Netzach and Ermiel, remembered his brush of embarrassment mingled with a touch of shame, and recognized that same sensation in Dean right now. Nearly two years of close association with the Winchesters had given Castiel a level of perception into emotional states that was nearly unimaginable in the past, and he knew that Dean believed in his self-sufficience above all else. It was that belief that drove him to defy Heaven and save the world. Though there were certainly times where Dean prayed deliberately - often with monikers such as "Smitey McSmiterson" or "assbutt" – it had happened several times lately that Dean had prayed by accident. It only took help-seeking thoughts focused on an angel to count as a prayer, and those did not have to be deliberate.

Cas knew the best way to respond in these moments was to allow Dean to feel right. "I am not sure how I was able to find you if it was not prayer."

Dean breathed in deeply, shoulders rising and falling under his flannel shirt. "Guess it's a good thing you did. Fell through the floor of heaven. That does not sound good."

The door to the motel room pushed open then, and Sam came in, loaded down with two plastic grocery bags. "There's no fast food in this town," he announced, unaware that any conversation was already happening. He caught sight of Castiel. "Hey Cas. So anyway, you'll have to make do with real stuff from the grocery store."

Dean looked stricken. "I don't want real food."

Sam chuckled and tossed the bags onto the dresser beside the TV. A small bag of assorted citrus fruits rolled out, causing Dean to scowl. He approached the bag and started to rummage through it. Soundlessly, he pulled out a beer, a pre-made tuna salad sandwich, and a prepackaged slice of cherry pie and retreated back to the bed like a caveman with a fresh kill. Sam shook his head and took a sip of the fountain soda in his hand. Castiel noticed that he was wet, the tops of his shoulders soaked through, and the angel looked outside for the first time. He saw rain pouring down, sheets of water so thick that they were actually being blown about in the wind. It reminded him of storms he had seen before, including the one that only Noah's family had survivied.

"Why are you here, Cas? I didn't know it was time to call in the big dogs yet. We haven't found Eve."

Castiel looked over at Dean and wondered if he should be focusing on human problems of monsters and mayhem or his more angelic troubles. As if reading his mind, Dean looked at him and nodded. Upon receiving this permission, Cas relayed the story of how the floor of heaven had split open and sent him tumbling. For Sam, he gave greater detail, elaborating on each the story, and Sam appreciated it with the relish of someone who loved information.

"They said they were going to seal something right before the floor split?"

"Yes."

Dean interjected, "You should try seeing if you can get back into Heaven."

Castiel shook his head. Sometimes the Winchesters' ignorance of the cosmos amazed him. God had created the heavens and the Earth, and only God could have changed the equations that ruled their combination. After Lucifer's rebellion, Heaven may have lost control of Hell, so to speak, but no one had the power to seal Heaven. Instability in the outlying human heavens was troubling but not comparable. "That will not be a problem."

Dean all but rolled his eyes. "Try it then, Pollyanna."

"Who is Pollyanna?" Castiel leveled his gaze on his friend, tilting his head sideways. It seemed they had enough on their plates without adding new people into the mix.

"An eternal optimist," Sam explained, corner of his mouth twitching while Dean actually did roll his eyes this time. "Just try it, Cas. Something doesn't feel right in this whole situation."

"You mean besides the fact that Heaven hocked an angel loogie into our motel room and it hasn't stopped raining since we got within twenty miles of this town?" Dean interjected.

"Yeah," Sam replied. "Besides that."

Castiel knew that their fears were unfounded, but he readied his vessel's molecules for the movement. Traveling by "popping" as the Winchesters sometimes called it just required careful readjustment of the physical properties of his being, not magic. However, as soon as he started his preparations, he felt that it was impossible, not because Heaven was locked as the brothers had feared but because his powers were being sublimated. There was a powerful force here. He could feel it over his abilities like a dampener, pinning them down.

"I'm guessing that's a no go," Sam said, sitting down on the bed opposite his brother. "If Cas is staying here tonight, you two are sharing, not me." He quirked a smile and earned himself a dirty look from Dean.

"Shut up, Sammy." He looked at Cas more seriously. "Could you not get back?"

Castiel shook his head. "It's not Heaven. There's something here blocking my powers. It must be..."

"The Wicked Witch herself," Dean interrupted. "Shit. We're back to a place I don't like to be. Team GED, Still-Reuniting-with-my-Soul, and Angel Lite."

"Team Free Will you called us once," Castiel replied solemnly. Both brothers shot him a sharp look; he supposed he had surprised them with hs ability to recall that and connect it with now. Finally, Dean smiled halfway at Sam before looking back to Cas.

"Yeah, Team Free Will," he agreed.

"Let's hope it works twice," Sam concluded. The quiet of the motel room sank over them and settled in, interrupted by only the plummeting rain.

X

"What did you tell them?"

Elena shot Damon a dirty look from her spot on the couch beside Stefan. The Salvatore boys had been back in town approximately an hour, and to put it bluntly, they were pissed off. Damon described the voice in his head as an ice pick through his brain, giving him a headache and a temper that flipped on a moment's notice. For Stefan, however, it was so much worse. His eyes were cloudy and weak, and rather than showing his usual fortitude or even his recent aloofness, Stefan was holding tight to both of Elena's hands. When he had first come in the door, she had seen the slackening of his shoulders and recognized agony in his eyes. "I want to feed," he had confessed. It pained Elena to see him that desperate again.

"Nothing. Alaric told them nothing, and I played along," she spoke softly, not wanting her voice to trouble their headaches any worse than could be helped. Their amplified hearing had its downsides. "But, Damon, I think they can help. They were..." She tried to think of the word. "Smart. Knowledgeable."

"Do they know what is going on?"

She hesitated. "I think maybe they do. Ric didn't want to push them since we were trying to hide so much, but I think so."

Damon's face flickered, and she could practically see the thoughts forming. He was envisioning scenarios where they could pull the information out of the newcomers, probably violently. The thought of turning those two brothers over to the whims of Damon Salvatore made her shudder. He could be witty, fierce, and on occasion... sweet, but his capacity for cruelty always ran just under the surface, bated only by the flame of humanity. Right now, with his fingers drifting to his temples every few seconds as he tried to stop the voice, he was frayed too thin to let that flame be more than a flicker. No, Elena did not like what she was seeing across his face.

"Damon, no. They're not doing anything wrong." She closed her eyes, already feeling guilty for dragging two innocent humans into this conversation.

"We have to do something, Elena." The words were what she had expected, but the voice saying them was not. It was Stefan who was speaking in a thin, steely voice. She opened her eyes to see that his were clenched shut. "Right now, I can smell the blood in your veins, and I want to drink it so badly that I cannot breathe."

Involuntarily, she recoiled, and in the same moment, Damon reached out and pulled her away from his brother. She should have resented Damon's reaction, but the solid warmth of him behind her was steadying against the dizziness of sudden fear. His heart beat resonated through her, syncing up with hers in one pounding.

"Elena doesn't have to be scared of me," Stefan spoke to his brother now as he rose slowly to his feet. "I won't hurt her. I have control."

"I believe you," Damon replied, but he did not loosen his hold on Elena's arm or let her move.

"She says," The way he said 'she' this time was totally different. Stefan's voice took on an almost reverent tone. "That she is coming. She says we can stop fighting and have what we want."

"I hear what she is saying."

"Who is she?"

"I don't know. But we have to find out."

Elena trembled against Damon, and he realized she was still standing there against him. Gently, he turned her around and looked down at her, eyes intent upon hers.

"I wish you didn't wear vervain like a good little girl. I would compel you to go home and stay there until we told you it was safe," His mouth twisted up at one corner, a ghost of a smile. "But I can't make it that easy right now. I can ask you, though. Go home? It isn't safe to have you here right now."

Elena swallowed and looked over at Stefan, whose eyes were wide and red. She recognized the face he was wearing now, one where he was fighting not to give in to bloodlust. She had seen that look on his face when Klaus had compelled him to turn off his humanity and kill her. It was hurting him just to be near her.

"Elena, please," Stefan forced the words out.

"Okay," she whispered. "Take care of each other. Don't hurt those hunters who came to town. Call me if anything changes. I'll call if the research turns anything up."

"Get those hunters to tell you what they know," Stefan said. "We need help."

"I'll walk you out," Damon said. "Sit down, Stef. Have a drink. Or ten." His mouth quirked wildly.

He kept his hand on Elena's elbow as they walked towards the front door and stepped out. He turned the doorknob and held the door open for her as she stepped through it. The small gesture of a gentleman always caught her off-guard coming from someone so volatile. He closed the door behind them for privacy.

"Damon, he's bad. It's really getting bad. We have to help him fight this," she pleaded, trying to ignore the montage going through her mind of what Stefan looked like on human blood.

"Thanks for noticing that I am in distress too." The sarcasm cut her to the quick, and she looked up into his face to see if it was rooted in truth. His eyes gave nothing away.

"You have better control than he does."

"Ironic statement if ever there was one."

"It's true, Damon." She carefully avoided eye contact and any of the messiness it always seemed to entail in their goodbyes before she headed out from under the awning and into the rain on the way to her Jeep. As she walked away, Damon called out.

"Go home, Elena. Nowhere else. Home."

She splashed water up around her with every step away from him. The black rubber rain boots had been the only shoes she could wear since this rain started, and now they were rubbing on the blisters they had formed on her heels. She winced as she climbed into her car and started it up, twisting the knob on the defroster to get it going. There was no point in pulling out until the windshield cleared, and the inability to do anything for a few seconds crippled her. Gripping the steering wheel in two hands, she gulped back tears.

She had thought it was over after they had discovered they could not kill Klaus because killing an Original meant killing his bloodlines, hundreds of vampires who may or may not deserve to poof out of existence. They had all reached a tenuous peace – the Mikaelsons outside of town, claiming to only want a home again, and the rest of them in the town, trying to put back the pieces of their relationships. If she was honest with herself, she had been imagining herself slowly forgetting all of the agony Stefan had inflicted on innocent humans and instead seeing in him the charming, well-intentioned man who had come back to Mystic Falls specifically to meet her. When she closed her eyes, she could still see herself back then, innocent, hopeful, and ready to fall in love, but the image was all she could recollect. She had changed. She was different now.

The ringing of her cell phone caught her attention and brought her back to reality. Bonnie's name raced across the screen. Elena picked it up and hit answer.

"Hi Bonnie. Any luck in any of your Gram's old books?"

"No," Bonnie's voice was clipped. "But there's something new to worry us. I drove out of town to go pick up Chinese food for Dad and me, and when I headed back this way, I noticed I felt weird."

"Weird how?"

"My magic's gone. Only when I am in town. But whatever is happening, it's suppressing my magic in Mystic Falls."

Elena could not have picked out worse news to hear right now. "Great." She thumped back against the head rest of the seat.

"How is Stefan?"

"Awful."

"Great." Bonnie sounded as defeated as Elena felt.

"Well, listen, just go home and get some rest. Maybe the magic problem is unrelated?" It sounded ridiculous even as she said aloud. "You're not hearing voices are you?"

"No voices here. Just magical silence."

"Alright, be safe, Bon."

"You too, Elena. Drive safe in this rain."

They hung up, and Elena pulled out of the driveway. She squinted into the rain and thought about everything that lay behind them. She had cried rivers of tears, screamed in pain, and every time, she been at the mercy of everyone around her. The Salvatores had put her in danger and taken her out of it, Katherine had turned her friends and manipulated their jointed lives, and all the time, she had simply been a human on the sidelines, showing compassion and fear in equal parts. But now, with the vampires in trouble, she had watched Ric kick into gear. He was a human, too, but he was taking charge, researching, loading up supplies, and making calls, and those phone calls were to humans too. The Winchester men were humans, and look at them, driving practically across the country to help what they assumed were humans in a supernatural situation. None of them were sitting by helplessly, and it was time she stopped doing so too.

The Winchesters had given Ric their cell numbers and told him they would stay nearby for a couple days, investigating. There was only one hotel in town. She hooked a right to Falls Inn and cut up the radio. She had to get some information.

X

Dean Winchester was three glasses of whiskey and a mother of a headache into his evening when he answered the room door to Elena Gilbert, the teenager from Ric Saltzman's house. She was no bigger than a minute, and either he was getting old or she did not look old enough to be eighteen. Her features were slim, delicate, and she did not look like someone who needed to be getting mixed up in their kinds of lives. However, he wasn't the kind of man to leave a girl out in the rain either, so he invited her in and let her get started talking while he sent Cas, who she looked at suspiciously, out to buy some beer. And boy, did the girl talk. With her eyes on Sam's face the entire time – Dean supposed his brother looked like a "safe place to land," ironic considering how cold and heartless he had been a few short weeks ago – Elena had spilled her guts.

With every word she spoke, Dean's sense of dread grew. She talked about vampires comfortably, familiarly, and it was immediately apparent that she knew what she was talking about. Sam led her through the conversation gently, asking good questions, and with each one, she gave the right (and therefore very wrong) answer. Vampires feed from humans and die when a wooden stake plunges into their hearts. Vampires can only walk in daylight with the help of magic. She knew the facts.

"Elena," Sam was saying, "You have to know that what you are saying is crazy. Vampires are predators. They can't be trusted."

Dean watched her face as she stared Sam down, absolute certainty in her eyes. "You're right, most of the time, but there are vampires who live other ways. Blood bags, animals... You must have come across this before."

"Lenore," Dean muttered the name involuntarily, earning him a look from both other people in the room. The image of the vampire was clear as a bell in his mind. She had suffered for being a monster, had had no choice in being turned, and she had chosen to live off cattle rather than feed from humans.

"So you know it's possible," Elena was looking at him now, and Dean looked away, not liking the trust he was seeing in those big brown eyes. She was perched on the edge of his motel bed, and a juvenile place in the back of his mind chuckled at the fact that there was a pretty girl on his sheets.

"Doesn't mean some teenage kid should be messing around with these Twilight freaks," he replied, looking at the badly painted lanscape on the wall to avoid eye contact.

"They are my friends. Weren't you listening? Caroline Forbes has been my friend since I was a toddler. She was killed with vampire blood in her system, completely against her will. She deserves your help as much as a human."

"I'm sure she is a great girl," Sam conceded, but Dean had no time for those placating conversations. He cut right to the point.

"Has she ever killed someone?"

He watched Elena's face fall as she tried to think of a way to spin her answer. Dean knew it was an unfair question. How many demons had he knifed, killing the person within? How many people had died in his big picture crusade to stop the Apocalypse?

"Yes. When she first turned. Before she had control. She didn't mean to. She still deserves our help."

"Then she's not just a normal girl. Normal girls don't rip people's throats out. They grow up to be soccer moms, with bad perms and spray tans, and most of them never kill anyone their whole lives. What about this Stefan you say is such a good person? Has he ever killed anyone?"

She swallowed sharply. "Yes."

"So he's been vamping around for God knows how long, and now he has sucked some _kid_ into his life..."

"Dean," Sam's voice cut the air.

"I'm not done," Dean snapped back. "Are you seriously listening to this right now?"

Sam turned to look Elena. "Could you give me a minute alone with my brother?" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few crumpled bills. "Get all of us a soda from the lobby vending machine?"

She obliged, and as the door closed behind her, Sam rounded on him. "What the hell, Dean?"

"She has no business being involved with vampires. She's a frickin' kid."

"At eighteen, we had already been hunting our whole lives."

"Killing monsters, not sleeping with them."

"Crass."

They stared each other down, Dean leaning agaisnt the wall and Sam taking a seat on the bed, apparently tired of hovering as a giant above all smaller life forms. Dean knew Sam was enjoying being topside. It didn't take a genius to see that little brother was trying to make the most of his fresh start. He had always been a kid who had that soft spot for people in need. Dean had been the balls-to-the-wall guy, quick to act, quick to snap, but Sam had always found the way of empathizing with the people they came across. Sometimes he empathized with the monsters too, which was surely what was happening here. Dean didn't know whether to kick or be proud of the kid. He was crafting his retort when the door of the motel room opened.

Elena was back with three sodas in her hands, holding one in each hand and the other tucked against her chest with her forearm. Beside her, though, was a stately blonde with round cheeks and a strained smile. The hair on the back of Dean's neck stood up instantly.

"Sam, Dean, this is Caroline Forbes. Caroline, this is Sam and Dean Winchester," Elena said, motioning from one to the other. "I wanted you to meet each other."

Dean mentally calculated how long it would take him to get out to the car and grab wooden stakes if this in fact turned out to be a trap. He did not like the odds. However, judging from the pleasant expression on the vampire's face, she was not intending to eat anyone right this second. Instead, she looked for all the world like a local beauty queen welcoming neighbors to her kingdom. She honestly reminded him of a girl he had dated briefly in high school.

"Elena tells me that Ric called you to help us," she gushed, taking a step towards them. Dean tensed, hand in his pocket. His fingers closed on a silver knife; it was not enough to take a vamp, but it might give them a head start. Rather than attacking, though, the blonde beauty wrapped her arms around Sam in a grateful hug before turning to him. He put up his hands and shook his head.

"Why aren't you wet?"

"Excuse me?" She looked startled.

He pointed out the window at the storm. "It's been raining cats and dogs since we blew into this town, and you're coming in out of the rain. Why aren't you wet?"

Now the hesitation left her face, and a big smile returned. "I'm very fast."

Sam chuckled, and Dean was instantly overruled, again stuck standing off to the side listening to Sam sympathize and offer support. The vampire had mannerisms that were human, yes, but he was a professional, and he could see the signs. Sometimes she would move her hand just a bit too fast, making the image the human eye could perceive blurred. Ordinary people might not even notice. Her voice also changed pitches quickly, vibrating through frequencies that were just a bit off the normal spectrum. He tried to hold onto those signs and use them as his proof positive, but there were other signs of humanity that were even more apparent. Her cheeks were rosy, her breathing steady and life-like, and her gratitude was as real as any he had ever felt. Every few seconds, she winced, for only a moment, and touched her temples.

"When we find out what it is," Sam said, still being diplomatic. That level of loyalty was touching. Dean knew that if he dug in his heels and refused to help this girl, Sam would agree, and in the morning, they would load up the car and get out of here. The idea was tempting. They didn't work with monsters. Their father had raised them better than that, the angel-on-their-shoulder's father had taught him better than that, and the fact remained that monsters were enemy species. But this Eve... she was a threat to them all, a monster to end all monsters, or rather, to begin them all. They needed to stop her from taking over this planet or their entire life's work went to waste.

"Actually we know what it is."

All three people turned their heads to look at him, and the hope in their faces made him dizzy. They were all counting on him to save the world.

X

Hunger rumbled through his body and over his skin. The need to tear open veins and guzzle their contents pounded in his every nerve. For over a century, Stefan had been in a tug-of-war with his lust, and he had never felt anything like this, even at his worst. His throat was on fire. Every time he swallowed, he felt sandpaper scratch down the raw flesh. Damon had gone to bed earlier, giving his brother an uncharacteristically kind pat on the shoulder. The "stay tough, buddy" routine was not as comforting as it should have been, especially when every breath inhaled only highlighted the agonizing hunger. He had followed his own restlessness outside into the garage, and now he was fiddling under the hood of his car. Occasionally, working at his furious pace, he would jam his finger or bruise a knuckle. That pure physical pain was a relief.

Elena was afraid of him. Seeing that bubbling of fear well up in her eyes had made his stomach ache. He had wanted so much to reach out and touch her again. Ever since he had returned to Mystic Falls, he had been dreaming of her touch on his skin and wondering when their love story would continue. He knew that while he was gone, she had changed. That hardening of her personality was evident in myriad ways. Teenage humans were full of nervous tics, touching their collarbones or necks while talking, fidgeting with the bottoms of their shirts when self-confidence ran low. Elena used to bear those same markers, but now, after his long absence and his short return, he noticed that they were gone. He saw other changes too, and some, such as her new ease with his brother, were too painful to consider.

In an argument a few weeks ago, he had pointed out these changes to Damon, condemning them, and his older brother had merely shrugged. "She's growing up," he had said. For someone perpetually stuck at seventeen, that idea had its own beautiful charm.

He pulled out the used oil filter from the car and tossed it into the waste receptacle. _You need to feed. I am coming. You need to feast._ He closed his eyes against the voice and the searing hunger.

He heard her before he saw her. Even through the pouring rain, he could hear footsteps on the gravel, crunching delicately through the muddy rocks. When she came into view, a brunette in a white dress, she saw him and grinned with pure delight. She was stunning. Though she moved slowly through the storm, she seemed untouched by the rain drops. Her face was a smile that lit up the night, and he started walking toward her before he even told his feet to move. The rain was bracing. Almost as soon as he walked out into it, he felt it racing down his skin, slipping under his shirt, running in streams all the way down to his shoes.

The woman held her hands out to him. "Stefan, my child, so good to see you."

Happiness spread from the tips of his appendages up through his core. She was beautiful, perfect. "How do you know my name?"

"I know all my children." Her voice was the loveliest song he had ever heard. "I love you all. Each and every one."

"Your children?"

"Yes, Stefan. I am your mother."

The idea made him happy, but a conflicting fact immediately countered it. "My mother was named Lillian. She was human." He remembered her as a mother, and from a cognitive perspective, he remembered that that was not a bad thing. Yet right now, it felt like the saddest knowledge in a world. He wished he had never known anything else besides this beautiful mother in front of him.

"You are a smart boy. You must know that in this new life, you were meant to have a new mother. I am the mother of who you are now." Her eyes glowed. Then a frown slid onto her mouth, and he reached out to touch her hands, wanting nothing more than to make her happy again. "But I am not happy."

"What can I do?"

"I have asked you to feed. You live as a human, but you are so much more than that." The woman reached out and stroked his cheek. Stefan closed his eyes as she did, breathing in her sweet smell.

"I'm sorry."

"You may call call me Mother."

"I'm sorry, Mother. Should I feed?" Stefan watched her face light up as he asked. Like a giddy child, she clapped her hands together and even jumped once on her small feet. Then she snapped her fingers. Through the rain walked a young man. Stefan recognized him as a boy named John from the local high school football team; they had played together, albeit very briefly. He was an upstanding student, honest and well-liked kid. Though his body moved slowly towards them, his face was a montage of flickering, fearful expressions.

"Go ahead, my boy," Mother leaned forward, whispering into Stefan's ear. "I have brought him for you."

Stefan could smell the blood rushing through John's veins and all but taste the sweet plasma. He breathed in slowly, savoring it, as the veins popped out around his own eyes and his fangs released. Without hesitation, he launched. His teeth sank into the pliable flesh of the neck, and he burrowed his face into the skin, gulping. His greedy pulls brought the hot blood flooing into his mouth, and he had never felt so alive, so happy. Mother smiled beside him, proud, and he could hear her voice in his head, _I am here. You need never deny yourself this pleasure again._

He fed until his sucks were dry-heaves through hollowed veins, and then he dropped the corpse onto the driveway stones.

"More," he said, turning his gaze to his beautiful mother.

"As much as you want," she agreed, leaning over to kiss his head, lips denting his soft hair. "As much as you want."


	3. Chapter III

Klaus detested hospitals. The cleanliness standards could not make up for the bodily fluids everywhere; all he had to do was squint and he could see the medley of blood, semen, and spinal fluid that coated nearly every surfce. A veritable Jackson Pollock had been created over the years, one tiny drip at a time. He wrinkled his nose and sidestepped a cart that had the unmistakable odor of urine. At the same time, he reached out to a passing nurse and snagged her wrist.

"Excuse me," His voice reverberated with complusion. "Could you direct me to Jessica Stratham's room?"

"Room 302. Down the hall and to the left," she answered listlessly, glazed eyes on his. He noted a mole on her jugular, pulsing lightly with each heartbeat. Hunger kicked up in his stomach, but he ignored it and let go of her arm. He walked down the hall and rounded the turn into the aforementioned room.

Looking in at the occupant, he noticed first her hair. The woman was a redhead, lovely perhaps but swollen from her injuries, and half of her hair was gone. The bandage on her head did little to hide the ravaged skin where the hair and scalp had been ripped away. Her neck was a bouquet of flowering bruises; just from what he could see, Klaus noted blues, purples, greys, and blacks all in the same range. It was macabre, even for a creature such as himself. He remembered reading in the morning paper that Jessica was a married mother of two.

Klaus could not be certain that Elijah had done this, but the disturbing detail of the hair, combined with his brother's recent disappearance, made him worry. In their early years, Elijah had been troubled by his hunger and had shown a startling lack of self-control. His hunger had been manageable, but his ability to control his strength had not. He had tried not to drink so much as to kill and yet had more than once accidentally ripped a limb off of a victim. A scalp would have been nothing in his hands.

Yet Elijah had not lost control in such a way in many centuries.

"I have never snuck up on you before. You must be thinking," The normally bright voice behind him was strained. He looked over his shoulder to see Caroline Forbes, holding an umbrella at her side and the fragile pieces of her emotions together on her face. There was nothing of the fashion plate in his girl this morning. Her long hair was twisted up in a bun, stray pieces flying loose around her face, and she wore athletic pants and a tee shirt two sizes too big. No makeup marred her pale skin. Something in Klaus's stomach clenched.

"Caroline." He rolled her name on his tongue as a greeting.

She stepped closer to the bed, lifting the chart that hung at the foot. "There are a lot of ways of saying horrible trauma."

"Not nearly as many ways of saying it as inflicting it."

She looked at him in disgust.

"Reality can be ugly," he added. "Why are you here visiting the most recent injured soul of our dear town?"

"I... we... I think it might be..." She seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. "Stefan is missing."

Klaus wondered if his surprise was written on his face. He had assumed that Elijah's recent problem was only his own, but if Stefan was also missing, the scenario at hand was very different than just old Mikaelson struggles resurfacing. But of the two vampires – his biological brother and the man who had once been as a brother to him – Klaus knew which one could have created the scenario at hand. Stefan was a ripper, and if he had fed, he would have drained to full consumption without hesitation. Only Elijah dined delicately, cautiously, only to accidentally maim his victim beyond recognition in the process.

"Missing?"

Caroline turned bright eyes up to him, tears sparkling. "I think he must have followed the voice."

"Voice?"

"In our heads," Her voice shook. "We have been hearing a voice in our heads for days."

Klaus wanted to reach out and touch her. There was such utterly exquisite vulnerability right now, creating a most perfect dent above her eyebrow. She was too scared to care that she had once labeled him too repulsive to be worth insulting. Her fear was erasing her hatred, wiping the chalkboard clean in a dark, wet smear. This, too, would pass, but for a moment, Klaus wondered if he could touch her without her being able to remember that hatred. Perhaps she would accept his hand against her cheek. He did not risk it.

"Describe it to me."

She spilled the story out. Her descriptions matched Elijah's ramblings about a woman who foretold her own coming. The whole concept seemed a little grandiose to Klaus who believed in violence over coercian much of the time, but Caroline did not seem to share his derision towards this strategy. She was so rattled she vibrated. He could have told her that Elijah was experiencing a smilar phenomenon, but he chose instead to keep this detail to himself. There was no reason to complicate the matter by sharing too much information.

"Is she still speaking to you?"

Caroline's eyes were sad. "Yes."

"Is it a direct conversation to you personally, or is she speaking on more of a..." He paused for the right word. "Loop?"

"I hadn't thought of that. You're right. It's a loop. Like... indoctrination."

"Is it playing in your mind right now?"

"Yes."

Klaus's self-importance swelled in respone to his sudden idea. If it was a voice that played passively in the background of Caroline's mind, he felt certain he could compel her to stop hearing it. His dulcet tones had forced powerful vampires to kill their soulmates and drain their families; he had driven Katerina Petrova across the globe, running from every person under his influence.

He took Caroline by the shoulders and looked into her face. She flinched under his hands, but he held steady. Her blue-green eyes whispered to him, asking for help even if she was not willing to do so aloud. He summoned his compulsion.

"Listen to me, love," Klaus said, "You can only hear that voice if you want to hear it. No one can make you hear it except me."

"Only you can make me hear the voice," she murmured obediently.

"And Caroline," Klaus continued without guilt "You are safer with me than anyone else. You should stay close until all of this passes"

"I'll stay close to you," she said.

Klaus's heart squeezed in his chest. What he had said to her just now was true. Until he had determined the solution to this unidentified problem, he knew that Caroline would be safer close to him. Her natural desire to create distance between them could not be worked through slowly and cautiously right now. Yet even so, it was not what he had wanted. He would have preferred to coax her into seeing his strength and vitality through charm.

"This will have to do for now," he muttered before finishing his warm, reverberating compulsion. "Now finally you should go home for right now and forget this conversation. You should do whatever it is you normally do on a Sunday morning."

"I'll go home right now," she mumbled, turning away and beginning her stroll out of the room. Klaus moved to the window and watched until he saw her moving through the parking lot below. Even through the pouring rain, he could see her vivid orange and pink umbrella bobbing to her car. Once she was in and pulling away, he turned back to the bed. The machines attached to the woman purred with pride at keeping her alive. He moved slowly to the door, pushed it shut, and clicked the lock.

"Oh Jessica, Jessica, Jessica," he crooned. "You have gotten yourself into quite the sticky mess. My brother should have known better than to leave you alive, no matter his hesitation. While I hope that you would not be able to identify him even if you awoke, I cannot take the chance."

He leaned down close to her ear. "Mystic Falls is my home now. No one runs me out of my home."

Even though her skin was bruised, she smelled sweet and delicious. His eyes flared, red-veined and bold, as he sniffed her jugular. A bite right from the tap sounded so tempting after the canned, tinny blood from bags for several weeks. Instead, he reached up and turned the dials on her IV stand to their maximum capacity. A soft, almost lovely dinging filled the room as the machinery tried to warn him that he had made a fatal error. He took a seat in the chair beside her until the heart line went flat.

He compelled his way out of the hospital, forcing sweet smiles and good days to himself from the nurses.

X

Sam was worried about Dean. Sam was worried about Cas. Sam was worried about the town of Mystic Falls. He was rapidly losing his affinity for this part of his personality. The last two days had been routine, as odd as that was to say when they were in a town working with vampires and trying to stop an ancient monster. The first night after meeting the locals, Dean had snuffled and snored through the night in his bed while Cas sat in the chair watching television, that constant, intent facial expression lit by a digital glow. The light of the TV illuminated the jars of wooden bullets soakin in vervain water.

The next day, they had gotten an early breakfast at a crappy diner and continued to dig into the lore about Eve. Castiel looked through books while Sam searched the web for everything he could find. Dean mostly paced about, knocked back a few brews, and bugged them for answers. That was typical on research days. But it was the way in which Dean was pacing that made Sam nervous. He knew that his brother saw himself as above monsters and demons and freaks. He took pride in his humanity, hiding behind it as a badge. He had never gone Dark Side. He was as proud of that fact as he was of his Impala. The hard frown and the too-many-beers-per-day indicated just how much Dean was struggling with what they were doing here.

So when they finally got word from Elena that Stefan, her vampire ex-boyfriend, had gone missing and needed to be apprehended alive, Dean had practically jumped out of his skin, loading their backpacks into the car and calling Bobby to ask about tracking advice. Bobby was like Dean and did not like what they were doing here, but Sam could no more have looked at those two girls and denied them help than he could have flown to the moon. That vampire – Caroline – had looked every bit as helpless as her human friend, and her big eyes had asked him for help even as she hugged him. They were so young; they did not deserve to be in a mess like this.

Now the Winchesters were in the rain, wearing ponchos of all things, and walking through the woods, following an honest-to-God blood trail. The trees overheard blocked some of the rain, but it smacked into their leaves with a nasty rattling sound. Sam adjusted the hood on his head and knelt down to touch the blood on the ground. It was slick and warm, not yet cooled by the falling rain.

"What do you think?" Dean did not kneel down.

"It's still warm." Sam straightened back up. He switched his machete from his right hand to his left, rubbed the dripping water off the hand, and then switched it back.

"Yay."

Sam almost chuckled, but the tension running like a rod up his spine checked him. He pushed a clump of wet hair behind his ear and tried to hear what was around him, but the sheer noise a rainstorm could make in the woods was staggering.

"I'm not sure it's safe to be out here right now," Sam said and immediately regretted it. He could feel the sarcastic answer coming before it even left his brother's mouth.

"You just want to wait until it stops raining?"

The rain had been pouring down on them for days. "Since when could the Mother of All control weather anyway?"

They walked on. The foreboding feeling swelled in Sam's stomach. He glanced over at Dean. He looked so confident out here, comfortable in the task of tracking, unafraid of dying. How was it that his brother had lived a normal life only a few short months ago? How had this man of rigid shoulders and angry eyes cooked breakfast for a kid and made love to a good woman each night? How had he himself ever believed that such a thing had been right for Dean? The arrogance of demanding such a promise from such a natural-born hunter... well, he supposed he should have been grateful for it. That same arrogance had given him the strength to beat the devil.

Ahead of them, he saw a body. It was a corpse of a young boy, no more than 12, fresh and still so human. In life, the boy had had a gingery mop of curls and ruddy skin. He was wearing a neon yellow rain coat and hiking boots. A mangled backpack laid beside him. He had just been a child, probably out tramping around the woods behind his suburban home. Perhaps he had been cooped up for days before now, watching the rain out the windows gloomily. Perhaps his mom had finally agreed to let him out for a little while, and then he had walked just a little too far, just a little outside of where he should have been. He could never have known such a mistake would be fatal. Sam closed his eyes and leaned his head back, swallowing down nausea.

"Christ," Dean muttered. He knelt down beside the body, touching for a pulse even though there was no chance of life. The wounds around the neck were not bloody; instead they looked as if they had been licked clean. Every drop of blood was gone. The child was completely exsanguinated.

Sam felt sick. "You think it was Stefan?"

"Don't talk about this filthy bloodsucker like his name matters." Dean stood back up.

"I don't like this either, Dean."

Dean turned a stony gaze his direction. "You don't _like_ this? Are you kidding me? We're helping some vampires find another vampire, another vampire who most likely just killed this kid. Only we're not finding him to gank him. No, we're finding this S.O.B. to bring him in alive."

The supreme discomfort of arguing over a child's corpse caused Sam to sidestep, putting the body behind him rather than in his vision. "Elena says he drinks animal blood normally, won't even drink out of blood bags. She is trusting us to help."

"Help someone capable of killing this kid."

"I would have been capable of killing this kid not that long ago," Sam forced the words out. Looking back into who had been without a soul stung like a fresh burn.

Dean held up his hand, one finger extended, as his mouth hardened into a thin line. "Don't go there."

The argument would have continued if instinct had not suddenly made them both look to their right.

Sam saw the flash before it actually materialized into human form or rather, somewhat human form. The young man had blood streaked around his mouth, dark rivulets dried along his neck and brighter, fresher blood on his lips and chin. The veins around his eyes stood out starkly against pale skin. In Caroline, Sam had seen the humanity within the vampire, but in this creature, he saw just how far removed from one another the two species could be.

"Holy shit." Dean grabbed the slide on his gun and pulled it back. The distinctive click was inaudible over the rain.

"Stefan. You must be Stefan." The creature showed no recognition of his name as Sam spoke. Sam held his hands up in front of him. "Easy, Stefan, We don't want to hurt you. Elena sent us."

No flicker crossed the vampire's face at the name; instead, he lunged forward. Sam reached out with his machete and slashed forward but hit only air. Stefan slid in the soft mud and snarled. The machete slashed out again. Dean fired before the vampire could get close to his brother again, but Stefan absorbed the shot in shoulder, followed by one in his abdomen, with a grunt. He leaned back with the impact but showed no pain on his face. Gunshots were enough to turn his attention, though, and he whirled to face Dean.

He launched, and this time, Sam moved in, possessed with urgency that gave him adrenalized speed of his own. Sam sunk the machete into the soft hollow between shoulder blade and spine, throwing the weight of his arm behind it and letting it bite its way into the flesh and muscle. This time, Stefan did unleash a howl of pain, but he neither fell nor slowed. Dean unloaded another clip into him, the vervain actually steaming out of the bullet holes, and reached to his side to grab his machete.

Sam felt the world move in slow motion. He did not know how to stop Stefan short of killing him, and he saw that his brother was about to do just that. Sam could not stop it, and he did not know if he should. This monster had killed a child. This monster was someone who did not want to be a monster. This monster deserved death. This monster had not chosen this.

Sam felt himself being thrown backwards before he saw the source of the sudden energy. It was a man with dark hair and superhuman strength: another vampire. In spite of the rain, he wore only a black tee shirt and jeans. He tossed Dean next, as easily as if the man were a bale of hay. Then he rounded on Stefan, grabbing the other vampire by the shoulders and shaking him viciously.

"You've got to hold it together, brother." This other must be Damon, the other Salvatore of whom Elena had said little and evaded much.

Stefan responded this time, unlike when the Winchesters had spoken. "You must feed." His voice crackled and rasped; it sounded as if he had been in the desert a thousand years.

"You're killing."

"She wants us to kill. She's amazing. And I am so..." Stefan shuddered, his eyes widening in ecstasy. "I am so hungry."

"Stefan..." Damon closed his eyes, hands still on his brother's shoulders. Faster than Sam could blink, Damon moved his hands up and snapped his brother's neck. Stefan dropped, instant deadweight.

Silence fell over the clearing, except for the sound of rain. Sam and Dean both rose slowly. Sam's ankle ached from the way it had twisted as he had been thrown backwards, and he knew that the bruising on his back was probably already flourishing. Dean got up even slower, holding his arm at the elbow in a way that suggested dislocation. They looked at each other and then at the strange sight before them.

"Harder to snap a neck with wet hands," Damon said glibly, throwing his brother's body over his shoulder.

"Your brother just killed a kid. The body's over there," Dean motioned with his head, not releasing his hold on his right arm. There was such venom in his voice that Sam was surprised Damon did not look more offended.

"No one will be more upset about that than Stefan when he is himself again."

"You must be Damon," Sam finally spoke, taking a step forward and holding out his hand. Damon looked at it curiously.

"And you must be the Winchesters. Look, as much as I love introductions and hand shakes and 'Hi, how you doin', good to see you,' I have stuff on my plate." Sam opened his mouth to speak but was immediately interrupted as Damon continued, "I get it. Elena asked you for help. What can I say? She's an optimist. I'm not holding my breath though. I don't like hunters, and I don't like that something is making Stefan into a bigger dick than me. Leave him alone."

With that, he whooshed away, sending a spray of leaves kicking up around him.

"Well, there goes my offer to buy him a beer and talk," Sam muttered.

"You'd think you'd be used to rejection by now," Dean countered, managing a shit-eating grin that did not reach his eyes.

"Jerk." The reaction slipped out of Sam's mouth without thinking, and as soon as it did so, the word hung in the air between them. That single word was a question and an olive branch: Are we okay? Sam knew that they would be haunted by the corpse of that child. He would just add it to his list of images that kept him up at night, but Dean would relive it, wondering in his second-by-second analysis how his timing could have been different and how he might have personally saved the kid. He also knew that if he and Dean were going to stop Eve, they had to be a team, and they had to agree with one another about who else was on it.

"Bitch."

Sam stepped around the kid's body, clapped his brother on his uninjured shoulder, and started walking out of the woods.

X

Elena cried into her hands as the savage screams swelled around her. The Salvatore basement had seen many dark sights; she had seen both Damon and Stefan tied up there before, trapped and cornered like wild animals. One might think she would be used to it by now, but nothing could be further from the truth. It got harder with each subsequent situation. It got more frustrating that they could not seem to keep themselves from getting in these messes repeatedly. And this time, Stefan seemed past the point of any humanity. To say it was turned off was to imply that he showed any capability of sentience. She had heard him speaking to Damon, expressing a need to feed, but when she had stepped into the room, he had started to snarl and then howl.

Perhaps she should have felt ashamed that her response had been to run, but the terror had been so visceral. Now on the couch in the living room, she could not keep the tears from pouring out. He had been raging for nearly twenty minutes. The ceaseless din echoed throughout the house.

Damon walked into the room, wiping his hands with a rag. The skin on the hands sizzled, steam rising off the skin, as he dried them.

"Are you okay?" He asked at the same time as she said, "What are you doing?"

Elena did not answer his question; she had no idea what she would even say because she knew they both knew she was anything but okay. Damon answered instead as he sat down beside her. "I was resoaking the restraints in vervain."

She looked at him, tilting her head sideways, and feeling her mouth wobble as she tried to keep from crying again. "I could have done that."

He did not answer but looked at her instead. His blue eyes saw everything she wanted to hide, so she looked down to his hands instead. The steam was gone now, and the red rash on his pale skin was fading quickly. Yet she knew what it must have felt like to put his hands in the toxic herb in order to restrain his brother. For all his gruffness, Damon believed in brotherhood, and he did love Stefan. He had put himself through the pain in order to protect Stefan from hurting someone else not because he cared about the loss of human life but because he knew how much Stefan would. Similarly, he had put himself through the pain of the vervain on his hands in order to spare her the pain of being involved in restraining Stefan.

"Are you okay?" She turned his question around on him.

"I have been better." His mouth quirked, and he raised his eyebrows. "Tying up Stefan just doesn't have the same old fun this time."

"Damon." His name became an admonition. "How bad was it?" She asked the question already knowing the answer. She had talked to Sam Winchester on the phone nearly an hour ago. He had called, reluctant to tell her the truth, but she had been firm. He confessed that Stefan had been murderous, that he had even killed a child. Her heart ached at the thought. Would she ever be able to look at Stefan again and not see the imagined vision of him tearing open a child's throat? Would she even have the opportunity to do so?

"Nothing I couldn't handle." Damon shrugged, and again, Elena recognized in him a lie meant to protect, whether he realized it or not.

"I'm not okay. I'm scared," she whispered, lower lip trembling. She started crying again, and he reached out to her, pulling her against him. She wept against his shoulder while he stroked her hair and murmured platitudes.

His fingers were shockingly gentle, sliding through the strands and pressing into scalp just enough to send tingles down her spine. When her sobs no longer shook her whole body, Elena felt Damon lift her from against his chest. He cupped her face in his hands and traced away the tears from her cheeks. Then, so tenderly it broke her heart, he put his forehead against hers.

"I want to feed too. I've been downing a blood blag every two hours, and I'm still hungry. You know what this hunger is doing to Stefan. But..." He twisted a lock of her hair around his hand. "You're still here. You trust me."

He had not said it aloud that way before, but even though it should have made her flinch, it was the truth. He was a murderer, a psychopath, and probably the most unpredictable person she would ever encounter. She trusted him with no one else in the world – not even with Stefan – but she trusted him with her. Deep in her gut, she knew that Stefan could not control himself and would kill her if the bloodlust became strong. Right alongside that, she knew that Damon would never let that happen. He might say unimaginable, ugly things to her, he might kill someone she loved, he might make selfish decisions, but he would protect her. When facing down the Mother of All Monsters, she could only focus on her fear and how warm that protection felt on a cold, rainy day.

"You won't hurt me," she said.

"I won't."

"Can we fix this?"

He squeezed her hands and then leaned back. She felt reluctance and restraint in his touch as he did so, separating them to sit apart again. The moment was over.

"Yeah. We'll send Bon-Bon out of town to work some witchy woo, your new fellas," He waggled his eyebrows, "will use their connections to figure something out. Before you know it, Stefan will be fixing his hair and lamenting his every nibble again."

"Not funny."

A knock on the door drew their attention, and Damon stood up. His gait was measured as he walked to the front of the house, and Elena stood up and followed to watch him. He opened the door. On the porch, there stood a mailwoman; Elena recognized her as Mrs. Johnson, a middle-aged woman going gray gracefully. She had been delivering mail here for nearly twenty years. Elena glanced up at the clock on the wall to check the time before it occurred to her that the time was irrelevant. It was Sunday. The mail didn't run on Sundays.

Damon accepted something from Mrs. Johnson, nodded thanks, and shut the door behind him. He slapped an envelope against his palm as he walked back down the hall.

"What is that?"

He flipped the address outward: Mister Damon Salvatore and Guest. The writing was beautiful, hand-written calligraphy that showed absolute precision in each stroke. Elena watched as he pulled it open and lifted a single ivory invitation. Unable to resist, she reached over to touch the paper of the envelope. It was high-quality, cloth-woven and undoutedbly very expensive. Nothing about that was a good sign.

"You are cordially invited to a gala ball in honor of the Apple Harvest on the tenth of September at six o'clock in the evening. Klaus Mikaelson will serve as host in the absence of his brother, Elijah, and sister, Rebekah. Attire is black tie," Damon read aloud, letting his voice rise and fall in a false-snooty accent.

"Klaus is hosting a ball?"

"Apparently. And is so eager to deliver the invitations that he is compelling the United States Postal Service. Really making them live up to that 'neither rain nor snow' motto of theirs."

"He didn't send an invitation to Stefan."

"Apparently not."

"What do you think that means?"

Damon sighed and then turned a sideways smirk on her. "Oh, probably a whole slew of things we won't like. It certainly means that Klaus is not in the dark about this whole Stefan... situation."

Elena swallowed sharply. She had been trying not to consider Klaus in all of this. Unlike the Salvatores, and certainly unlike Caroline, Klaus was otherwordly. His strength and his lack of moral compass showed so little humanity that it made it impossible for her to even meet his gaze. She only saw the person he had once been – according to Elijah, that is – when he spoke to Caroline or Stefan. In the two of them, he seemed to see something desirable. It made her skin crawl the way he would turn collector's eyes on them. His cold face would suddenly glow, and she could imagine him mentally checking off a list: hybrid army, undaggered siblings, friend, lover. He was just waiting for each of those items to get in line and cooperate with his plans, so he could rule uninhibited. She shuddered to imagine who Klaus would be if he got everything he wanted.

"What are we going to do?" The question felt so huge at this point, encompassing so many problems.

"Dust off your dancing shoes, Miss Gilbert. You are going to be my plus one."

A traitorous flutter rose from her stomach, a bubble of warmth floating up to settle into her heart.

X

"Your incompetence disgusts me right now. Is it really so difficult to hold a tape measure steady?"

"Is it really necessary for me to hold a tape measure at all? Get some of your lackeys to do it."

"Oh Tyler, how I would love for my lackeys to be handling this situation right now. In fact, how I would love for you to be one of my lackeys rather a free agent expressing his disinterest in helping me. However, thanks to your friends and your plucky determination, my hybrids are no longer in town, and you are enjoying blissful independence. So I cannot force you to be competent. Instead, you must find it deep within yourself."

Klaus flipped through the caterer's pamphlet pages, reading over the list of options. If choosing based on his own preference, he would opt for a nice bloody steak au poivre and sumptuous side dishes. Mystic Falls was choosy, however, and their small town love of festivals had set the bar high for thematic events. The food would have to be light, fall-inspired, and plentiful to satisfy these folksy Southerners. He wanted every single person in this town to be in his house for this event. In an empty town in which every vampire and every human drank free booze and danced, the owner of the mysterious voice would be inevitably drawn to his web. He had much he wished to say to her.

Tyler Lockwood labored in the foyer of the estate, pulling a measuring tape along the floors and windows. The young hybrid may not have been sired, but he was still aware of how deadly his creator could be. He was still bendable.

"You're getting it now," Klaus observed as Tyler wrote down a measurement on the clipboard. The hybrid shot a look that could have melted steel and folded his mouth into a frown but refrained from saying anything. "Such a good little worker bee."

Tyler's phone rang in his pocket. "May I answer that, sir?" Dripping sarcasm aside, Klaus was just grateful Tyler was smart enough to realize he should ask permission.

"You may."

Tyler scooped up the phone. It seemed the caller was Matt, a human whose relationship with the Salvatores and company puzzled Klaus. Why did they keep him around and go to such lengths to do so?

At the same moment that Tyler went to walk outside with his phone, saying something about this infernal rain, the exact moment he pulled the door open, he revealed Caroline on the front steps, wearing a hideous pink poncho and shiny black galoshes. She burst in through the door. When she spared a glance to Tyler, it was no more than that, just a moment's look. Their breakup had simply been the talk of the town – and rumor in these parts attributed that breakup to Tyler and attributed the reason to Klaus – and Caroline's punishing attire choices, prior to the Big Rain, had been gathering attention. Klaus had to admit that he himself had glanced down a neckline here or there, admiring soft skin over the music of a beating heart.

"Caroline," he smiled as he said her name. "I can only assume you are here because you received my invitation and now have questions."

She looked like a different creature than she had yesterday morning at the hospital. As she pulled her poncho over her head, she revealed her lovely curls, rosy cheeks, and lips skimmed with a strawberry sweet balm he could smell from over here. Under that absolutely disgustingly unfashionable rain attire, he was pleased to see a wrap sweater, tied closed around her waist, over a ruffly top. Caroline was back in business. His compulsion had worked its magic.

"You look lovely, by the way," he said. He shot a look over at Tyler, who was standing on the front step, door wide open, unabashedly watching like a hawk as he spoke on his cell phone. Subtlety was not one of that young man's gifts.

"Don't even try that, Klaus. What are you doing? The town is falling apart, and you're throwing a party."

"Hosting, hosting a party. One who is older than the age of 21 does not throw parties."

She took a hard step towards him, but a smile wobbled at the corners of her mouth, just begging to come up and play. "You're an ass."

"And you are quite profane. To answer your question, I am hosting an event in hopes that whoever is causing the town to fall apart will show up. Then I will kill her."

Caroline shook her head. "I think she may be gone. I can't hear her voice anymore."

"Look outside. The rain is still here. While I am not on speed dial for our friends, the Salvatores, I must assume that Stefan is still a problem."

Now her big eyes widened again. "So you think she's still here? Why can't I hear her? What could have changed?"

"I have no idea," he lied. He silently congratulated himself on his own brilliance in relieving her pain at the hospital, resetting her to a state of peace, at least inside her own head.

Tyler walked back in, shoving his phone in his pocket. His face darkened. "Car, could I talk to you alone for a minute?"

Klaus had to admire his girl's spunk. She squared her thin shoulders, carefully arranged her face into impassivity, and nodded. Her heart had been broken, the separation not merely because of losing Tyler but also because of the implication that she would swirl her infectious, bubbly goodness in Original darkness. Klaus knew it was no easy task to survive heartbreak. He remembered a time in which he had allowed himself to cry over a woman. Tatia, and his rivalry with Elijah for her affections, had been so long ago that it was barely real now. It felt like a dream. When he closed his eyes, her face blurred from something distinct to merely Elena all over again. The uniqueness of Tatia's features had been lost to him forever.

Caroline and Tyler walked outside, down the edge of the wrap-around porch. For their hearing, it would have been far enough to provide privacy, but they had a tendency to underestimate him. Their voices were strained.

Tyler was speaking first, "What the hell, Caroline? You came over here to talk to Klaus. Just to chat? How the hell does he know about Stefan?"

"Stefan? Well, I mean... I guess... He must have figured it out. I mean, it isn't that hard to connect those dots. Especially after that poor girl died yesterday."

"The girl? You haven't talked to Elena, have you? Stefan's killed a couple people, even a kid. He's a freaking monster. But there's no way he was the one who got that girl. All his other bodies have been completely drained."

"He's a Ripper." Realization dawned in her voice. "Then who attacked Jessica?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Right now, we just have to focus on working together to stop Eve, and that doesn't involve Klaus." Tyler sounded furious. Klaus felt a stir of offense, normally enough to make him snap a neck, but remained where he was standing. He flipped another page of the caterer's catalogue and continued eavesdropping.

"Eve?"

"Yeah. That's what the Winchesters call her most of the time. They found it in some lore or some demons said it or something."

Klaus froze. The Winchesters were a familiar name for creatures such as himself. Humans, low-level beings like the Salvatores, and other peons might live in a world of blissful ignorance of the big picture, but one does not live centuries without developing a powerful awareness of just that. These brothers – whose names he did not recall – had stopped an Apocalypse of some sort a few years ago, snuffing monsters out left and right along the way. If he remembered his rumors correctly, they worked with a fallen angel and an old drunk. The chatter of demons about the brothers had shifted from derisive to awestruck over recent years. How had the Winchesters made it into his town without him noticing? The development was troubling.

"She seems so much scarier with a name." Caroline continued, trying out the sound of the name. "Eve."

As for Klaus, he feared nothing on this earth, monster or hunter, but if he had to choose which name gave him greater pause, he had to give that award to Winchester.


	4. Chapter IV

"I may have found something," Bonnie's voice was nothing more than a whisper.

Castiel had not spent much time on college campuses. As a whole, they were bastions of sin and decadence but not quite dank enough to require heavenly intervention of any kind. Whitmore College seemed to be of the same ilk as most. On their trek to this obscure part of the reference library, he had seen a pair of young lovers pawing each other in the stacks, fused together at their mouths. He was intrigued at the ferocity kissing seemed to require if it was going to lead to sexual intercourse. In spite of that roughness, humans seemed to see it as an act of love or at the very least, pleasure. He pondered this unique dichotomy from his seat on an uncomfortable wooden chair across from the young witch he had been sent to accompany.

Dean was taking charge again in their lives. His first few days in Mystic Falls had seen the elder Winchester as flustered, unsteady in the face of this unique situation, but his feet were under him again. He had jimmied them invitations to some gala event in which the whole town would be attending, had formed miniature alliances within the group of people currently enlisted in the fight against the Mother of All, and had still managed to eat a cheeseburger a day. Dean had been working with Elena and Alaric, searching for answers as to Eve's whereabouts in the town. Sam had been assigned the more finicky task of interacting with the vampires, using Caroline as a conduit for information when he wasn't locked to his laptop. Castiel himself had been assigned the task of accompanying a witch, Bonnie Bennett, on her daily excursions out of the town. He had been selected for this job for the same reason Bonnie had. Both of them were powerless within the confines of the town. Outside of it, they were able to employ their own means to their interests.

Without a backup plan as to how he would face Raphael, Cas had decided to forestall his return to Heaven. Though he recognized the inherent irresponsibilty of remaining here on Earth when needed in the war, he also knew that there was a good chance that if he made his way up there, he might not be able to come back for some time. He could not see himself leaving Dean alone right now.

The town had quieted since the vampire brothers had retreated into their home. Castiel had yet to meet either of them; Dean offered only grunts as to his opinions of them, and Sam, who had now met the elder brother twice, seemed undecided. He had only been willing to say, in a measured tone, "I think we are safe to work with him right now." It did not represent a glowing endorsement of the creature.

However, Cas had to admit that he himself was impressed with the witch to whom he had been assigned. She was confident, intelligent, and a devoted follower of speed limits on their daily drives out of town. From the first day, having been told nothing of his provenance, she had touched his hand and looked startled.

"You're not human," she had gasped. "What are you?"

Dean had staunchly forbidden him to tell anyone that he was a celestial being, but he saw no way to lie to Bonnie about what she could plainly see. He explained to her both his species and his purpose in being involved with the Winchesters, and she was a surprisingly good listener. She drew parallels between their situations, explaining that witches were not supposed to be involved with vampires but that she could not resist helping her friends at every turn. That conversation had launched a camaraderie between the two of them that now carried through their days. The honesty also allowed him to follow her lead on human interactions without fear of making her suspicious.

"Look here," Bonnie tapped on the table in front of him to get his attention. She slid a book towards him, her hands encased in white gloves intended to protect the old manuscripts they handled. Cas did not need such implements; his vessel's hands did not secrete damaging oils now that he was dead. "Does this look promising?"

Cas looked down at the page, taking in the description. The legend in the document claimed that Southern witch covens had once tapped into Satanic powers in order to expel monsters from their towns. He shook his head.

"It is untrue. The powers of Hell are not able to be used in such a way, and even if they were, doing so would require a knowledge of Enochian that no human has ever possessed."

"Damn. You sure know how to burst that little bubble of hope I get about once a day."

"I'm sorry." He had no idea what else to say.

"It's alright. I'd rather you were honest anyway. I'll keep looking. Would you mind going and getting us coffee?"

"I can do that."

He accepted the wallet she extended and stood up. There was a coffee kiosk downstairs. His dress shoes squeaked ever-so-slightly on the carpet, earning him dirty looks from some of the more industrious students as he walked past. He tapped his way down the stairs and joined the short line at the brightly colored kiosk. The humans around him were so stressed, practically vibrating with their anxiety, but at the same time, they also emanated happiness. It was as if they were happy to be stressed. He would have to ask Dean about this seeming oxymoron.

He reached the front of the line and laid a ten dollar bill on the counter. "I would like a large black coffee and a large iced hazelnut."

The barista moved by rote through the change making and then the pouring. She passed him his order wordlessly. Cas tilted his head sideways and put his fingers against hers as she handed him the cups. The skin-against-skin contact allowed him a brief moment's insight. Her mother had cancer – Stage 4 and fatal. He wanted to offer her comfort, but he had learned that humans did not appreciate unexpected revelations into their personal affairs.

"You should try to have a good day," he said simply. Startled, as if unaccustomed to kindness, she really looked at him for the first time since he had come to the counter.

"You too," she answered, a wobbly smile appearing.

"Take care." He carried the coffee back up the stairs, modulated the volume of his steps through the main area, and then sat back down across from Bonnie. She was intent on a musty green book, turning the pages delicately with one gloved hand while the other propped her chin up. Her dark eyes moved from side to side slowly, and she was comfortable enough with Cas at this point that she did not jump to speak or look up just because he had returned. After a few seconds, presumably after she finished the paragraph she was skimming, she reached out for her coffee.

"They would absolutely kill us if they knew we had food and drink near the special documents," she chuckled.

"I thought the death penalty was reserved for more severe crimes here in America."

"It is. I was just exaggerating."

"Oh." Castiel took a long experimental drink of his coffee. If he drank it strong and black and very hot, he could imagine himself the recipient of the caffeine high humans sought from the beverage. He did find it bitter and unappealing, but the ritual of having a cup of coffee with Bonnie had nice companionship. Perhaps that was part of the joy of the beverage for humans. "You were going for humor."

"Just hyperbole," Bonnie smiled and sipped her beverage through the red straw.

They settled in again and read for a while. Castiel admired the human perspective on divine mysteries, but many of the books contained so many fallacies that he did not see the purpose of this work. He would drift again, looking up from the reading to the library around him. In those moments, while Bonnie worked steadily, he would wonder about Heaven and morality. Was he still rebelling by working with the humans against this creature from Purgatory? Was he working for or against God's will? Did such a question even matter anymore?

Bonnie's phone vibrated on the table. She scooped it up quickly, scanned the screen, and then read it aloud, "Castiel? This text is for you. It says 'Have Cas call. The dick forgot to charge his phone.' I don't know whether it's Sam or Dean, though. I don't have their numbers in my contacts."

"It's definitely Dean." Cas pulled his phone out of his trench coat pocket and turned it over in his hand. He wiggled his fingers against a few buttons only to see no response.

"Use my phone to call him then." She pushed some buttons and extended it to him. "It's already ringing."

"Cas?" Dean answered the phone without a hello.

"Hello, Dean." He answered quietly but found that he still heard a loud shushing sound from somewhere else in the room.

"Have you found anything? We're spinning our wheels here right now."

"We have had coffee and read inaccurate books," Castiel noticed that he was earning himself another smile from Bonnie, though he was not certain why.

"Just another day in paradise."

"Have you and Alaric found anything?"

"No." Dean's voice was a curse all on its own.

"Has anyone else..." Cas dropped his volume again, "died?"

"Not in town. Who knows about other places though. Who knows what these frickin' monsters are doing to people out there. I don't know, Cas. I don't know if we're doing the right thing here."

Castiel admired the courage it took Dean Winchester to admit that he was uncertain. Dean's confidence, false though it might sometimes be, was important to who he was.

"I often wonder the same question about my courses of action. Terrible situations can create unlikely but necessary allies. You are all warriors for the same cause right now."

"Thanks, Cas. That... helps. I guess. Call if you find anything."

"We will."

"Oh ho. So you and the witch are a we now?"

"We have been partners for several days now in our research, yes."

Dean was laughing as he hung up the phone.

The time stretched out again, repeating itself in a loop, until the minute amount of natural light in the library faded to nothingness. Castiel did not care for time of day, but Bonnie checked her phone every so often to keep track of the hour. After much waiting, Bonnie got excited, shaking a book at him. Her gloves were abandoned in her excitement, and she looked around furtively before slipping the tome in her bag.

"Cas, I think I've found something. Let's go. I'll tell you in the car."

They hustled down the stairs together, leaving behind their work station uncleaned. Bonnie's enthusiasm was quivering in the air around her, and Cas could feel his own anticipation heighten as they climbed into her car. As soon as the door shut, she started up the car and turned to him, eyes big with wonder.

"This book is about death and undead beings. Witches are all about balance, you know. We're agents of nature. Nature always creates a balance for everything," she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and started pulling out, glancing in the rearview mirror. "That's why vampires can be killed by wooden stakes and vervain. There has to be something natural, growing, that serves as a counterbalance to something dead."

"What does this have to do with Purgatory?"

"I'm getting there. So, listen, this book talks about the afterlife of monsters. Where do they go? Now, based on what you've told me, we already know that answer – Purgatory – but the writers of this book didn't know that. What they did know was that bringing a person back from the dead requires you to kill someone. Balance and all. Plus it's unnatural. Well, bringing a monster back from the dead is also unnatural, but it must... it must have a counter-weight to that. Something natural and growing has to serve as the balance for everything, right?"

"Correct." Cas recognized that she was simply offering up the human interaction tactic of having the listener speak in order to keep him engaged.

"So the witches of this coven thought that they had found the theoretical answer for how to stop a monster back from the dead in the one kind of monster that is supposed to come back from the dead."

"I'm not understanding where you are going with this."

"Phoenixes. Phoenixes die and are reborn from the ashes. Their ashes represent dead monsters coming back to life. The witches thought phoenix ash would be poison to anything that escaped the other side and needed to be put back."

Castiel had not seen a phoenix in many years, perhaps several centuries, but he had to admit that the witches' theology made sense. If nature needed a counterbalance for undead living again, the phoenix was a logical choice. He could not understand how God could have conceived such intricate, incredible creation any more than he could understand how He could abandon it.

"You may have found just what we need. We should get this information back to Mystic Falls as quickly as possible," he said, reaching for her bag.

"Oh no. No popping out of the car into town. What if whatever dampens our powers once we're there also tracks them? Just hang on. The drive is only 45 minutes."

He admired her logical thinking and readjusted himself back into his original seated position, back straight and hands resting palm down on his thighs. "I have always been impressed by your people."

Bonnie shot him a look. "My people? You mean witches?"

"No. American humans in the regional South with darker skin colors." Castiel had watched the human tapestry for many years and seen the range of both suffering and triumph all across the globe.

"Excuse me?" Her tone was suddenly icy; he had no idea why.

"When your people were slaves – like your ancestor, Emily Bennett – you prayed often and looked to Heaven for answers. Even when the centuries crawled on and God did nothing to intervene for you, you still kept faith. Some of the music was so beautiful that angels would open the channels between Heaven and Earth wider in order to hear it better. I remember listening to 'Go Down, Moses' sung by a woman named Harriet Tubman when she carried babies to new life, and I remember being so proud to be a shepherd for God's creation. Moments like that, I did not resent my many centuries being stationed on Earth. Your people's optimism has been representative of the best of the human spirit. I have seen that resilience in many forms in many skin colors, in both peoples and individuals, but I will always find it beautiful."

He looked out the window as he spoke, admiring the green trees and faint sunshine, knowing he would be seeing nothing but rain very soon. When the proper time for a reply had passed and Bonnie had still not acknowledged his statement, he turned to look at her. Her eyes glowed with unshed tears, but she was smiling. She kept one hand on the wheel and reached over to put her hand on top of his.

"My Grams would have loved to have met an angel before she died," Bonnie did not look at him, and her voice was thick with emotions he did not yet recognize. "I am lucky to know you, Castiel."

Castiel felt a sense of pride well up inside of him as he recognized that somehow, he had made her happy.

X

Even in the midst of what felt apocalyptic, the players in the game have to eat. Mystic Grille was abuzz with townspeople, busy for a Thursday evening, and the talk of the restaurant was the upcoming Harvest Ball, as it was coloquially known. The citizens of Mystic Falls loved any excuse to dress up and congregate with alcohol and dancing, and Klaus Mikaelson's ball was no exception. If anything, it was generating more excitement than a typical town festival because of its intrigue. Southern towns did not often have attractive, wealthy European transplants. His accent alone would have been enough to generate buzz, even if he never invited a soul over for champagne.

Elena did not enjoy hearing such eager gossip about Klaus whose presence in the town still sent shivers up her spine. After she and Damon had opened the invitation, she had called around. The invitations had gone out en mass – everyone seemed to have one – but it was Caroline who had expressed glowing commendation of the idea. "Klaus is trying to draw out Eve, so we all have to go," she had explained. "But just because it is supposed to be a trap doesn't mean that it can't also be fun!"

Popping a french fry in her mouth and licking a spot of salty grease away from her lower lip, Elena watched Caroline using both thumbs at a rapid-fire pace to send out messages. They were sitting at a high-top table beside the darts. Elena missed the familiar thud of the Salvatore brothers throwing darts beside them, talking smack or arguing, depending on the day. Damon had offered to come with her into town, but she had refused his company. His eyes had watched her all the way out of the house; he did not want to let her go alone, but he could find no good excuse to stop her.

"You're helping Klaus organize a ball." Elena made it a statement rather than a question.

"Seriously? Have you met me?" Caroline looked up and grinned. "Yes. Save the judgment. Yes, Klaus is evil and despicable and horrible. Yes, he can be the absolute worst. But if he is going to throw a ball either way, it might as well be fantastic."

It was such Forbes-logic that it made Elena laugh. "That's true."

"Unfortunately," This time, a frown dented Caroline's cupid-bow mouth and a crease appeared above her eyebrows. "Tyler is also helping him. Trying to avoid his wrath, I suppose."

"Don't you think we have bigger problems to worry about than staying mad at Tyler?" Stefan's howls flashed through Elena's mind.

"I can multi-task," Caroline replied. She picked up one of the french fries, plunged it in ranch dressing, and then took a long sip of her coke. "I can be mad at Tyler for breaking up with me – over Klaus, of all things - and organize a kick-ass ball and help any way I can in stopping Eve."

"Who you can't hear anymore."

"Who I can't hear anymore," Caroline confirmed. "I have no idea what changed, but I am so incredibly glad. Anyway, how is Stefan? Any change?"

Elena again saw Stefan's veiny eyes and blood-soaked skin. "No," she lowered her voice. "He screams constantly. Damon's actually been giving him blood from blood bags, just trying anything to make him calm down, and Damon has been chugging the stuff too. He still feels the urge, hears the voice. Honestly, I don't know how he's resisting if Stefan is this far gone."

Caroline gave her friend a long, knowing look. "Maybe he has something motivating him." Elena looked away first. As she did so, she saw a now familiar sight coming in the door. Sam Winchester looked tired, hair a little greasy and dark circles under his eyes, from his day hunched over a computer screen, and Dean looked antsy. Even as he walked in, he drummed one of his hands on the outside of his leg. He nodded his head with his steps too, keeping rhythm to some kind of music in his head.

"Good God, they're gorgeous," Caroline breathed, touching Elena's arm to make sure she also was looking at the incoming brothers. "How did we end up in a town filled with good-looking men?"

"How did we end up in a town filled with vampires? Just lucky, I guess," Elena answered with a tight smile. Her friends had unofficially appointed her as the go-between for them and the visiting hunters, and the role made her uncomfortable. The righteous fire that had carried her over to their motel room that first night had dwindled down to a flicker. She was scared, drained, and confused. For once, she had so little idea what was the right course of action that it terrified her. She knew that these brothers doubted her and Damon's ability to keep Stefan contained, and they had seen firsthand the damage he could inflict. She just wanted to fix Stefan and show them that she knew what she was doing. If she was honest, she just wanted to show herself the same thing.

She reached up and waved to the pair of brothers who veered over and came their way. They grabbed two high top stools as they walked, practical and efficient, and put them up at the tiny table with Caroline and Elena. Elena noticed the way they moved. Dean moved first, Sam mirroring just behind him, and Dean clearly took the seat beside her, putting his brother beside Caroline. He may not still be expressing displeasure at having to work with vampires, but he was still uncomfortable being near them. She knew that if Caroline reached out right now to touch his hand, he would flinch.

"Hey," Elena greeted. "Any word on... anything?"

"Sam found nothing. Me and Ric found nothing. Cas and Bonnie aren't back yet. That's the Illustrated Classics abridged version," Dean grunted. "Got a menu?"

"You're just going to order a bacon cheeseburger," Sam said.

"I thought you might want to read the salad options, asshole," Dean replied. He looked up and motioned to a waitress. She trotted over, smiling too broadly and looking too eager to give them menus. As both men perused the pages, the waitress – whose name tag read Grace – stood next to the table. Elena looked at her own empty glass and briefly considered being rude and shaking it. Grace had not looked away from either man at the table for more than a second. Finally, Dean ordered the bacon cheeseburger, and Sam ordered the cobb salad, forcing the waitress to reluctantly head to the kitchen. They both ordered beer to wash their food down.

"How's Stefan?" Sam asked. Elena saw genuine compassion in his face, and she appreciated how much effort that probably took after what he had seen. Little Winston Smith had been mauled by an animal, according to the official report, but Sam was an unfortunate witness to what had really happened.

"No change."

"What about you, Caroline? Feeling the urge to go loco and rip out some kids' throats?" Dean asked. He narrowed his eyes as he spoke. Caroline looked embarrassed. She cast her lovely blue-green eyes downward and twisted her hands in her lap, but Dean was unmoved, reaching in to grab a french fry and eat it without asking permission. He might as well have lifted his leg and peed on the table, marking his territory.

"No. I can't hear her anymore."

"At all?" Sam asked.

"At all. I'm not sure why I stopped if Damon can still hear her, but it is quiet up here. Which is giving me time to focus on the ball tomorrow night. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to go play pool somewhere less bigoted," Caroline said it without looking at Dean, and yet it was obvious who she was talking to. In fact, Sam ihad to lift his fist to his mouth to hide his smile, watching Caroline walk away. Once she was clear of the table, he laughed openly.

"Shut up." Dean grumbled. "Frickin' vampires."

"You earned it. You were being a dick, and she called you on it."

"She's a good person," Elena offered.

"I'm sure," Dean said. Grace returned to the table, putting down their orders, and it was quiet for a few minutes except for the sounds of chewing. Dean ate like a rabid animal, taking large, wolfish bites and then chewing while looking at the rest of his sandwich. The rest of the bar was looking at them oddly, furtive glances followed by whispers, and Elena realized with surprise that they were judging. From their perspective, she was a teenage girl, just of age and orphaned, as well as rumored to be involved with both Salvatore brothers, and now she had two men in their thirties buzzing around her table. Her good Southern reputation, already in shambles, would be irreparable now.

As reading her thoughts, Dean commented on just that: "They think we're total creeps sitting with you."

"My reputation isn't exactly at its best, anyway."

"A little too much fun this summer?" Sam all but groaned at his brother's comment.

Elena thought about how much of an understatement that was. Memories of her birthday floated to the forefront of her mind, of her standing in her white dress in front of the mirror, too sad to even consider walking downstairs. Stefan was ripping his way across the South, and she felt that she could neither find nor save him. She had been just about to leave and go home when Damon had walked into the bedroom. He had paused in the doorway, nervous about approaching her, and in his face, she had seen so much unspoken emotion that it clenched her insides into knots. When he had placed her necklace around her neck, his fingers had grazed her skin, and she had cleaved into two pieces that had not yet been put back together. Like Katherine Pierce before her, she was torn between two brothers, and it shamed her.

While she was thinking, Sam stood up and walked over to the pool table to join Caroline. Elena supposed he wasn't too interested in interpersonal situations. Dean, however, was still looking right at her, eating leftover french fries from the plate and waiting for her to answer his question.

"Something like that. I dated Stefan for a time, but he... went off the rails. To be honest, he didn't have a choice, but he was gone, and we looked everywhere for him – Damon and I did – but it wasn't easy to find him. People started to talk about all the time I was spending with one Salvatore and then another," Elena replied. She fiddled with her paper napkin and accidentally ripped a corner off.

"When did falling for Damon happen?"

Elena went cold. "I didn't fall for Damon." The lie sounded almost true when she said it aloud.

"Yeah," Dean shrugged. "Say what you want. I judged you for being involved with vampires but not for liking one brother and then another."

His eyes were sincere, and Elena looked around to make sure no one else was listening. Caroline was watching Sam convince some local men to play a game of pool; the smirk on his face suggested that he was pretty confident he would win. The men accepting the challenge did not seem to be perceptive enough to see that.

"To tell you the truth, I don't know what I feel. When I met Stefan, I didn't know about any of this supernatual stuff. I was just a girl who lost her parents too young. My brother was a pot-smoker, and my aunt was too young to take care of us. I started back to school and couldn't believe this handsome, wonderful guy saw something good in me. I wasn't a cheerleader anymore, barely found the strength to smile, but Stefan thought I was beautiful and special," she explained.

"So you fell in love."

"I really did. Head over heels. And once I found out what he was, I was terrified, but I still loved him. Then everything started to fall apart. We were all in danger, and I discovered that I am a doppelganger for the vampire that turned Stefan and Damon. I still loved Stefan – still love Stefan even now – but I was wrong about what had first made me fall so in love. He had not seen the beauty in me beneath the exterior. At first, he only saw the exterior. That was what made him show up. But Damon disliked me on principle alone at first, just because I looked so much like Katherine and he had once loved her so much, and then he fell in love with me. And then when Stefan went off the deep end, I felt like I was a coin, and depending on the flip, a different face would come up. I don't know which face I want to come up from day to day."

"You want my advice?" He tapped his fingers of his left hand on the table and lifted his beer to his lips with the other. She noticed that he scanned the room, shoulders tensing slightly and then relaxing again once he had seen Sam.

"Is it going to help?"

He chuckled. "Probably not. Want it anyway?"

"Sure."

"My real advice would be don't get involved with vampires. But my life advice for normal people... Don't worry about it. You're eighteen. You're a kid, Elena. You don't have to have an everlasting love right now. You're not Topanga."

"Is that some 'listen to your heart' advice from a hardass like you?"

"I guess it is."

"I'll try to take it," she replied. "So what about you? Have you been in love?"

His face flickered. Pain tightened the faint lines around his eyes and made him look older than he was. "Nah. I've spent my life on the road."

The tightness in his voice closed the door on the subject, so she tried another approach to continuing the conversation. For all his gruffness, Dean was a good listener, and she wasn't ready to lapse into silence. "Are you looking forward to attending the ball tomorrow?"

He snorted. "Hell no. I haven't worn a tux in a couple years, and I've certainly never attended anything called a ball. If it weren't for Eve, I'd have been freaking thrilled not to have gotten an invitation. But with everything going on, we need to be there."

Elena felt a surge of guilt at not telling him about Klaus and the other Originals, but she knew he was already fighting all of his instincts in not killing her friends. Explaining the complicated origin story of their line of vampires – and how ending Klaus could kill possibly hundreds of monsters – would only tempt him further. But at the same time, she needed him and Sam to attend the ball tomorrow night in case Eve did show up. Klaus would pose no threat to them under his own roof; he was too dedicated to his new image as upstanding citizen.

"You know that Caroline pushed for those invitations for you two as an olive branch?"

"I know."

"It's not her fault she's a vampire."

"I know." His stubbornness hung in the air between them, and Elena reached over to take a swig of the beer Sam had left behind, getting herself a glare. "You're underage."

"I'm plotting the death of the Mother of All Monsters with some hunters I barely know in order to get my ex-boyfriend out of a dungeon lockdown. Don't judge me."

He tilted his head sideways, considered it, and then lifted his beer bottle forward to clink against hers.

"Cheers."

X

Dean cut up the radio in the Impala and turned on the windshield wipers; the left one made a terrible scratching sound as it dragged along the glass. Its rubber had worn completely through. He flicked the wipers off.

"Son of a bitch." He looked at the rain splattering down. "This weather sucks."

"Want me to get out and change the blade?" Sam offered, unbuckling his seatbelt. Dean shook his head, grumbled under his breath, and got back out. He walked around to the trunk to dig under the ammunition, salt, and paraphenalia for the actual normal car supplies like oil and extra wiper blades. As he dug them out, he relived his conversation with Elena and her simple question about love. He liked to think he had been in love. In his youth, he had seen something special in Cassie, a safe place to land when everything felt overwhelming. Sometimes, in Jo, he had seen possibilities that had been staggering: she had been another hunter, and for one moment, the two worlds of relationships and hunting had not seemed so starkly separate. She had been so young. He unwrapped the new blade from the plastic and walked towards the front of the car.

Jo's death had sliced off a piece of his heart, hacked it away and then cauterized what was left so that it could never hurt in quite the same way again. Then he had spent a year with Lisa, and perhaps he had loved her. He had never told her that, and he knew that he loved being with her, being with Ben. Losing them and erasing their memories of him had been horrible, but it had struck that same place in his heart cut by Jo's death. The grief had been unable to penetrate as deeply, unable to take as much of him, as it had the first time he lost that way. Lisa and Ben, in their own way, had also just been possibilities. As he pulled one wiper clear and worked the new one into place, he framed it clearly in his own mind: he had seen the possibility of being in love but had never followed through on it.

He looked through the rain-soaked windshield as he changed the blade and saw Sam's face, blurry through the dirty, wet glass. For one maudlin moment, Dean saw his little brother as a kid again and remembered all the love he had carried with him from place to place. He had been sloppy with love for Sammy, folding his clothes, fixing his dinners, and holding his hand at night when the nightmares were too scary. That was probably the real reason he had never been in love. His well of available love was only so deep, and he had given it all to his family from the start, especially to the little brother who never got to have the home with the mom who cut crusts off the sandwiches and the dad who was home to play ball before dark most nights.

The windshielf wiper situation resolved, Dean tossed the old one into a dumpster and got back in the car. Thin Lizzy was on low, and Sam was on the phone.

"Yeah... We'll be back in a few minutes... Yeah... Uh-huh... Bye."

"Who was that?" Dean cut the radio back up and pulled out of the parking space.

"Cas. He and Bonnie found something."

"Where is he?"

"Back at the motel."

Dean whipped out of the parking lot and up the street, running a cool 13 miles per hour over the conservative town limit. Thinking about love was enough to drive him into a sullen silence normally, but he knew Sam was especially frustrated with having struck out today. So Dean belted out some boys are back in town, even elbowing his passenger and getting him to sing along as well. By the time he pulled into the narrow parking spot at the motel, he could almost ignore the emotions that had been threatening to come to the forefront and instead buzzed with adrenaline. They got out of the car and entered the room.

Castiel was sitting in the chair by the window watching television. For a celestial being, he had a propensity to choose junky TV over more intellectual pursuits every time. Right now, the vice of choice seemed to be a Reese Witherspoon movie.

"Hey Cas," Dean greeted, tossing his keys onto the dresser beside the TV. "What's the news?"

"Bonnie and I discovered a book..." Castiel started to explain without looking away from the the screen, but Dean could not hear him.

Whooshing generated in his ears, a tornado filled with scraping and colliding scrap metal drowning out the world. After a second, the sound became a pain in his chest, and his heart swelled inside, hitting his ribcage with each beat, banging into the bone. He staggered and grabbed for the edge of the dresser but missed, lurching into the bed instead. In his peripheral vision, he saw Sam clutching at his own chest and gasping for air.

Something was happpening. Colors swirled in front of Dean's eyes, joining the roar in his ears to render him deaf and blind. Searing pain in his chest made it hard to breathe, but he coughed viciously, trying to make enough air clear his throat to get Cas's attention.

"H-h-h..." Dean managed to begin pushing sounds out past the tightening of his throat.

He felt hands on his shoulders. The hands gripped too tightly; they hurt too. Dean's chest squeezed in again, giving his entire body the sensation of fingers whose circulation had been cut off by a rubber band. He was going to die if he could not get his words out.

"H-h-h-hex... hex bags," he finally choked. The hands left his shoulders, and he fell to the ground, thumping down. He crawled his fingers across the floor until they found warmth. It seemed to be Sam's leg, near the knee, and he put his hand there. _I'm here, Sammy..._ he thought, darkness sinking down around him. Unlike the pain, the black of unconsciousness felt safe and comfortable, but he fought it anyway.

It was too strong, and it pulled him under.

When he opened his eyes again, he did not know how much time had passed; the obliterating pain was gone. Dean could breathe easily, his heart beat soundly, but his back ached from his collapse to the ground. He wasn't on the ground now, though. That odd, lumpy firmness of a hotel mattress was beneath him. He pushed his eyelids open and saw blue before any shapes could form. Castiel looked down at him.

"I burned the hex bags. I had to use a lighter."

"I hate witches," Dean cursed, closing his eyes again.

X

Sam held a hand towel filled with ice against his head. His lungs still hurt from the crushing pressure, but he had resumed calm. Their lives were so full of close calls that it was hard to spend time and thoughts on gratitude for survival, but this time, he felt intense relief that Cas has been here. If they had come back to the motel and arrived before their angel, then they would have died. It was just that simple.

Joshua may have made it clear that God was taking a laissez faire approach to managing His creation, but sometimes, Sam wondered if maybe He hadn't had a hand in making sure that Castiel was the angel who first crossed their paths two years ago.

"You're certain it wasn't Bonnie?" Dean was demanding, pacing in front of the TV. Humans would have shaken their heads or looked indignant, but Castiel merely turned his gaze straight to Dean and considered it.

"Nothing in her behavior has been consistent with wanting to see either of you dead," he finally replied.

Dean still looked suspicious, so Sam spoke up in Cas's defense. "And she dropped Cas off here, so she knew he'd be here when we got home."

"So that means we have another damn witch somewhere in this town. On top of the vampires. On top of the underage girls. On top of Purgatory bitch. This is the worst goddamned town," Dean stalked over to the mini-fridge and got out a beer. Sam wondered briefly how many Dean drank earlier.

"Underage girls?" Sam had to ask.

"Yes. Are there any hot women in this town who have graduated from high school?" Dean groused.

"We can search for all the eligible princesses in the kingdom tomorrow night, Prince Charming."

"Shut up."

Sam steered the conversation back to what was important: what information had Bonnie and Cas's research – he suspected mostly Bonnie's – turned up that his could not? He couldn't help but feel competitive when it came to combing the lore. When he was kid and they had stayed at Bobby's, Dean and Bobby had been the fishing, hunting, playing catch buddies. Sam had joined in, but that had never been where he and Bobby had connected. It was the knowledge that old coot represented that had been Sam's world, and he had loved sitting at that desk with him and combing through the old books. He had learned smidgeons of hundreds of languages, practiced drawing protective sigils from myriad cultures, and memorized chunks of lore that continually amazed his brother (even if Dean always dismissed such knowledge as nerdy unless he was the one who knew it). Sam liked ot think of himself as a warm, even guy, but he was miffed at the thought that a teenage newbie witch could find something he could not.

But when Castiel started to explain what had been found, Sam suddenly wasn't so sure that she had. It sounded ludicrious and largely useless. Where would they go about verifying this theoretical information? Where did one find a phoenix in the 2000s? How much of a hunch was safe to go on when one was confronting an incredibly dangerous original monster? He missed the fearlessness of being soulless. After the hex bags, he was still dizzy, nauseated, and nervous, and this conversation wasn't helping.

"Phoenix ash as natural counterbalance. That sounds like some organic, yoga, tofu-crap," Dean said from his new location, the seat at the small table by the window.

"I know you prefer guns," Cas replied with seeming sympathy. Sam stood up and started walking towards the door. He dropped his towel-wrapped ice on the bed beside Cas.

"I'm going to call Bobby about this. You guys keep bickering like an old married couple while I'm gone." He opened the door to step out under the outside awning. Behind him, he heard Dean say defensively,

"We weren't bickering. What's eating him?"

Sam shut the door and dialed Bobby. He picked up on the second ring and like so many other hunters, used a name as a greeting. 

"Sam." The gruff burr was comforting after a long day, and Sam spilled the story of research, hex bags, and phoenixes in a measured monologue, giving him the scoop without judgment. It was hard to hear over the pounding rain, and several times, he had to step back because a gust of wind would send a spray of droplets under the roof.

"Jesus Christ, son. You've got a right nasty witch on your tail to lay a hex like that. Watch your back."

"We will, Bobby. I'm more worried about this phoenix ash business. There is this ball here in town tomorrow..."

"Did you just say 'a ball', Cinderella?" Sam did not appreciate the irony of having Bobby turn his own snide joke against him, though Bobby had no way of knowing it.

"Yeah, yeah. But with the whole town there... well, if I were Eve, that's where I would go. It'll be like a buffet. A handful of vampires to drive crazy and a bunch of unsuspecting humans."

"Then you'd better hope the bitch isn't as smart as you. I'm brewing a pot of coffee now to settle in for a long night with some ancient texts, but we're not exactly going to have you running around with phoenix ash darts by tomorrow night."

"We'll just have to be careful."

"Yes, you will. How's Dean?"

"Who knows with him? He doesn't like what we're doing here, that's for damn sure, but he's not talking about it." Sam's statement was followed with prickly silence. So Bobby still didn't like what they were doing here either, and like his scruffy protege, he wasn't talking about it either. "Right. You feel the same way."

"Just kick it in the ass," Bobby replied. "Call you if I find anything."

"Thanks, Bobby," Sam hung up and went back inside. Castiel was back in front of the television, asking Dean questions about why Reese Witherspoon was crying over a dog and not her failed marriage. Dean's attempt to frame the idea of crying for two things at once was well-worded, but Cas still looked confused. Dean was kicked back on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and clicking on the touchpad of his brother's laptop cheerfully. In fact, the relaxed shoulders and cat-who-ate-the-canary grin suggested that he might be up to no good.

"Why does she not tell him that she loves him? She clearly does not love the man she intends to marry," Cas observed.

"I don't know, man. Movies and TV shows and crap are all about the dramatic tension. Sure, in the real world, she'd probably just tell him the truth, but then there'd be no big reveal at the end of the story. Chicks love the big reveal."

"And large penises."

"Holy mother of God. Stop watching TV, Cas."

Sam grabbed one of the wooden chairs and pulled it up beside Castiel. For right now, he had nothing better to do than watch Reese Witherspoon deny her feelings for a handsome redneck. He didn't want a beer, he had no idea how to start looking for the witch who had tried to kill them, and Eve was still just sending precipitation down by the bucketful.

He chalked today up in the Loss column and kicked his shoes off.


	5. Chapter V

The foyer looked exquisite. The railings of his double stairacases were wrapped in gold ribbon, and gilt pots were filled with preserved apples in an array of natural colors. Synthetic dirt, clean and decorative, even graced the apples that tumbled out of baskets next to the door. Hired hands trotted around the grounds, doing everything from preparing food to scrubbing the grout in his guest bathroom. Being wealthy was a privilege few were able to enjoy, and Klaus luxuriated in it. He had not raised a hand to clean in many years, even though he liked for everything around him to be spotless.

In another lifetime, Elijah would have been at his side, insisting on kindness to every servant and knowing the exact proper placement of each decoration. Their Norse upbringing aside, Elijah could be downright British in his ways. Rebekah would have been another presence in the house. In the 1920s, she had loved throwing ludicrous parties. Now she was in New York City exploring herself and the 21st Century, and Elijah was somewhere in the wind. Klaus knew he should be looking for him, but there was much to be done here. Servants were not going to supervise themselves, and he delighted in being the one to handle such affairs.

Not only did the flow of servants delight him, but the sight of Tyler Lockwood on a ladder changing a lightbulb and Caroline Forbes carrying a clipboard did as well.

"Is everything in order, love?" He asked from where he stood at the top of his upstairs balcony, looking down on his kingdom. Caroline turned her face up towards him, and he saw the flit of annoyance cross her features and then smooth. The simple endearment stiffened her every time.

"Well, the chrysanthemums are not here yet, so I cannot speak for those, but everything else looks perfect. I am about to go home and get dressed," she replied. She straightened a gold ribbon as she spoke; her rubber rain boots squealed against the marble floor. It was a very unpleasant sound.

"I cannot wait to see how lovely you will look in whatever you have chosen," he said. Tyler glared their direction from his place atop the ladder, which only made it more fun to offer up the compliment. Caroline tapped her pen on her clipboard, though, and frowned.

"Stop flirting with me, Klaus."

"As you wish." He turned away from the rail, smirking, and walked towards one of his spare bedrooms. The plush carpet below his feet barely sank under his steps. It was still stiff and new, even though he walked on it daily. He had purchased it from a particularly expensive dealer in Prague in order to ensure that kind of quality control.

He pushed open the door to the spare bedroom to see a slim Nordic beauty seated on the bed, legs folded under her. She was tiny, no bigger than five feet and no more than a hundred pounds, but her long fingers, lined with thin silver rings on every knuckle, practically glowed blue with the power of her magic. Lahela was one of the more powerful witches he had ever managed to wiggle under his thumb. Her natural connection alone practically hummed in the air. However, she had weaknesses: a non-magical husband and a petite three year old with angelic blue eyes. She did not stand a chance at protecting them against Klaus every minute of every day, and so here she was, doing his bidding.

"Lahela, darling," He sniffed. "The room stinks of your magic. Have your curses worked?"

She stirred something in the small pewter cauldron in front of her, and when she looked up, her bright blue eyes were fearful.

"Something has interfered with the hex bags. The Winchesters must have found them before they could work."

Klaus felt a dark, nasty stirring of frustration. He should have anticipated that the hunters would be smarter than to be taken down by hex bags from an ordinary witch, but he had hoped that the stories of their triumphs had been overblown. Caroline and Tyler had no idea he had heard their little conversation, but the next day, Caroline had come to him again – heeding his compulsion's command that she stick close for safety – and she had explained their presence in town, asking his blessing to invite the Winchesters to his ball. "We are not going to tell them anything about you," she had assured, and though he had been touched by what could have been concern for his safety, he had not trusted it. He had sought out a witch to help him handle those brothers before they could make trouble for him.

And yet he should have anticipated that anyone with as much brand-name recognition as the Winchesters would be harder to kill than that.

"You failed." Klaus did not make it a question.

"Just a temporary setback. Nothing that cannot be rectified tonight at your ball," she replied.

White-hot anger flared up in him. He moved forward, not curbing his impetuousness at all, and without the slightest warning, snapped her neck.

Though he would have preferred to make her suffer, he could not have risked her turning any magic against him. There were always other witches; witches were nothing if not disposable. He dropped her body to the floor and peeked into her cauldron. Nothing there looked particularly valuable. He smiled down at her lovely corpse.

"The very idea that I would allow anyone to slaughter those men at my ball. You had no idea how to be a proper host."

Caroline's voice floated up from downstairs. "Klaus!"

"Coming, love," he called back, flip and cool in spite of the thin note of fear in Caroline's voice. It was most likely an issue with the caterers. He stepped out onto the railing again and looked down.

The front door stood wide open, and in it, was a lovely brunette in an elegant, spotless white dress. Energy radiated in the air around her, and Klaus knew in an instant who she was. She looked up at him, and in her honey-brown eyes, there was a white streak where there should have been a pupil. So ferine was the effect of this abnormality that it eclipsed all guises of humanity she wore.

He clenched his hands on the balcony railing.

"Klaus!" Caroline called out his name again, but this time, the woman in the doorway approached her with long, liquid steps.

"Hush, my child," the woman purred, holding out her hands to Caroline, "Listen to your Mother."

Caroline drew her hands back from the attempted contact and lifted anxious eyes towards Klaus. His insides lurched not because of fear of this Mother but because of that look on Caroline's face. She was scared, and she was looking to him. His compulsion had told her to stay close to him for safety, but nothing in that order could have made her look at him like that, like he was the hero who could save her.

"You should be feeding. You should be happy," the Mother continued.

"You must be Eve," Klaus interrupted. "I can't say that I am impressed with your aesthetics. White is hardly this season's color."

"Don't touch her," Tyler spoke at the same time, moving down the ladder at high speed, and taking a stand beside Caroline. For a moment, the woman looked bemused and took his hand in hers. Making skin contact seemed to shock her. She jerked her hand back, and she flickered as if losing control of her projection of the brunette. Klaus saw the grey, hideous evil beneath the beautiful woman she wanted seen.

"What are you?" All hints of nectar in her tone vanished, turning to ice in an instant.

Klaus started down the stairs, and he felt the flare of rage for two very distinctive reasons. One was that Tyler now had a protective arm around Caroline, and the other was that this Eve dared to come into his house uninvited. She even had the audacity to demand answers. No one answered her question, and the white streak at the center of her eyes widened, overtaking the iris.

"What are you?" She shrieked.

"Stop talking to them, love," Klaus approached. He stepped smoothly between the two estranged lovers and Eve. "I am the brains of this operation."

Eve regained her composure and turned a measured face to him. She looked him up and down; she dared to smile. "Then surely you can tell me what is happening with my children?" She turned that glowing, peaceful smile on him as if he could not see the danger below its surface. "This young woman has defied my orders. I want her to feed, and she resists what will bring her joy. And this young man... he is mine and yet is an abomination. You are also not human, and yet you do not seem to... appreciate me," she rolled the word on her tongue.

He chuckled. "Tyler is my very own creation. He's a hybrid of a vampire and a werewolf. Like myself. I'm the original hybrid, of course. You might even call me the... Father of All Hybrids." He mimicked her rolling of the words, emphasizing each one by letting his tongue taste it a few extra seconds. The bit of melodrama paid off. Eve looked stricken and outraged at the same time.

Long silence stretched between them, but Klaus was comfortable in discomfort. He could sense the vibration of Caroline trembling behind him, feel the steadying touch that Tyler was offering her.

"You're lying," Eve said, eyes flashing. Her composure had returned again, concealing the rage almost completely.

"Come now. You must know that creatures such as ourselves... we do not lie. There is no need."

She lowered her voice to a husky, layered purr. "How were you created? What are you?"

It took Klaus a moment to realize she was attempting to compel him, and then he laughed a genuine deep laugh. "That is not going to work on me. Anymore than, I suspect, mine would work on you. You may touch my hand." He extended his hand, unafraid now of what she would do. She had revealed weakness already: he knew that she had not known anything such as himself existed.

She touched his hand, and he was surprised that her skin felt nothing like flesh. Instead, it had the toughness of leather.

Eve's brunette face melted away. In its place, the wrinkled, putrid, grey countenance appeared. The teeth were sharp, separated in her mouth by blood-red gums. When she spoke now, the lovely lilt was gone; the voice was gravel and death.

"I am not leaving this town. I have business with my children here. Such as your brother, Elijah."

"I will destroy you," Klaus replied. He hoped his face did not betray the sudden rattle across his nerves. Her true form was unearthly, unlimited. It was terrible.

"You have no chance."

With that, she vanished, melting into a wisp of dark, black smoke.

"I can hear her in my head again," Caroline whispered fearfully, reaching forward to clutch onto Klaus's hand. She did not push Tyler away either.

Her terror was palpable in the air around them.

X

"Here's some liquid sustenance, Saint Stef."

Damon unscrewed the cap from one blood bag and then did the same to a second one. He stuck the tube in his mouth and took a long pull. The lukewarm blood soothed his frayed nerves; the effect would only last briefly. No matter how much he drank, his insatiable hunger returned within minutes.

Stefan looked up with cloudy eyes. His wrists were lashed to the chair, but his fingers curled and uncurled, reaching for the blood bag. Frustrated, he grunted.

"I'm coming. You're such a junkie," Damon played out the facade of his usual witty banter, but it rang hollow. Like a good nurse, he put the tube of the other blood bag in his brother's mouth. Stefan sucked it dry within seconds. Damon repeated the process four more times before shaking his head. "I'm sorry. We can't spare any more right now."

"Brother, please." Stefan's eyes were closed as he moaned out the words.

Damon winced and did not answer. Instead he gathered the spent bags and headed out, bolting the door shut behind him. He allowed himself a moment of weakness, leaning against the reinforced metal and closing his eyes. A headache behind his eyes had been his constant companion for days. Before all of this began, he would have expressed delight and a certain devilish pride in having Elena as his date to a town function, but today, he was already eager for tomorrow to be over. Over a hundred years had passed faster than these last few days.

He took a weary trudge up the stairs, ending in the turn into his bedroom. He got dressed quickly. Wearing a tuxedo had never been his favorite, but he did so comfortably. When he looked in the mirror, he could not help but admire how natural he looked, handsome and at home in his own skin. Life as a plantation owner's son had afforded him ample opportunities for formality growing up.

In Stefan's bedroom, he knew Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie were getting ready. Caroline had arrived at the house ahead of Elena. The queen of organization herself had mixed up the time, and she had been terse, nervous. In a bated whisper, she had ultimately confided in him that Eve had shown herself earlier, and that the Mother of All was the most horrible creature she had ever seen. Damon did not know how much credence to give the opinion of someone whose nether regions obviously quivered in Klaus's presence; after all, Klaus was a horrible creature himself.

Damon considered walking in on the girls, surprising them, earning himself a glare and some faux catty comments, but walked downstairs instead. He waited on the couch, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The minutes slipped by as he worked on ignoring the voice inside his head.

"Damon?" It was an external voice that called him back to himself. He looked up at Elena; the sight of her softened him in an instant. Her dark hair fell in a sheet around her face. The tight lines and unhappiness that so often sagged on that youthful face was gone, momentarily replaced by relaxation. In spite of it all, she was a young woman made happy by getting dolled up for a dance with her friends. Only after noticing the beauty of her eyes, glowing in that face, could he see her dress. It was some sort of silver fabric that shimmered against her skin and floated with her steps.

"Yes?" He responded, the corner of his mouth quirking up.

"You okay?" She looked sympathetic. "Caroline and Bonnie aren't ready yet."

"Getting all pretty for their dates, I suppose."

"Stop. Sam and Dean have been helping us."

"Yes." Damon admitted it but did not have to like it. _Feed. Feast. Indulge_. The voice in his head echoed, pinging around his skull, and he breathed in the scent of her sweet blood. He closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and ignored it the same way he had been ignoring it since the rain started.

Bonnie and Caroline finished getting ready, both wrapped in shiny fabric and wearing fake shiny smiles, and the Winchesters arrived at the door. They looked different than they had that day in the woods. The taller one, Sam, was in a suit that was just a bit too short for him; his grey socks and his wrists were both too visible. He had the look of a puppy who had grown into adulthood, even been trained to follow all the grown-up commands, but had never lost the big feet and clumsy gait of its youth. Damon could practically smell the "little brother" label on the man. Ther other brother, Dean, was more imposing. Behind his face was ten pounds of baggage in a five pound sack, but he held himself upright, looking the whole world straight in the eye.

They loaded into two separate cars; Damon appreciated Dean's choice of vehicle, a sleek '67 Impala with almost as much personality his own '69 Camaro. "There's just something about a Chevy, am I right?" Dean had managed a companionable moment in spite of his clear desire to stake all of the vampires around him. Damon couldn't fault him for that. They were opposites. Hunters wanted to kill vampires, and vampires just wanted to kill. Mystic Falls had a way of upsetting the natural order, and that imbalance made everything sticky, messy, complicated. Perhaps the strange thing was that he himself was starting to accept the way everything around here worked and feel comfortable in the chaos.

The Mikaelson estate glowed, its exterior strung with glittery strands of lights, and they were greeted at the door by a smiling, obviously compelled young man with a bright apple-red bowtie. The very sight of it made Damon straighten his own black bow tie and hold out his arm to Elena, who tucked herself against him. Sam escorted Caroline in, allowing her tuck her hand just inside his elbow with almost as much charm as a Southern gentleman. There was politeness and gentility in the gesture but no deeper affection. In the antebellum South, they would have said that Sam Winchester had "good breeding." Dean had an arm thrown casually over Bonnie's shoulders; it was absolutely the wrong way to escort a woman into a black tie event, but he had said something to make the witch laugh and not notice. The young man at the door took their umbrellas from them.

They all drifted apart quickly. Caroline went looking for Klaus while Bonnie showed Sam and Dean around the social landscape, pointing out people. The brothers looked uncomfortable in every way. Elena, however, stayed near her date. Together they looked at people's outfits, avoided touching one another unexpectedly, and watched for any indication of Eve. Damon had also grazed on the various trays of food circulating the room; he reached out for a piece of bruschetta with apple chutney.

"Not bad," he said. "Though I expected a sit down meal from the Original douchebag."

Elena had not eaten a bite of food. Now she lifted her hand to her throat, nervously rubbing the skin at the base of her neck. "Do you think she'll be here?"

"I have no idea." Eve's voice in his head surged at the mention of her, but he suppressed it. "Speaking of people we dislike..." He motioned his head towards the staircase. Klaus was descending, pausing after each step. His wolfish smile might have passed for welcoming, but it was the kind of welcome one might receive upon entering a predator's lair. Damon snorted.

"Friends, neighbors," Klaus managed to project his voice without shouting in the slightest, and the murmur of the crowd faded. "I am so pleased to welcome you to the first annual Harvest Ball. I hope you have been enjoying the refreshments, and now I hope you will enjoy the dancing. If you'll humor me in a little... bit of ceremony..."

He smiled such an honest self-deprecating smile, a smile that said 'Forgive me my silliness,' that Damon almost believed it.

Klaus continued, "I would like to the opportunity to lead the first dance of the evening. You have so welcomed me to this wonderful town. Who would do me the honor of joining me for this dance?" He looked out over the crowd, and Damon was certain that a few of the young women who knew nothing of the blood on Klaus's fangs would be raising their hands to volunteer. Women dig an accent.

However, instead of airheaded bachelorettes, Mayor Lockwood stepped out of the throng of partygoers. She looked resplendent in red satin. Her smile tightened at the edges but never slipped. "Mr. Mikaelson, I think no one would be a better choice to represent our town tonight than a lovely former Miss Mystic Falls, Caroline Forbes."

Damon nearly chuckled at the improbably brilliant strategy. Everyone knew that Klaus carried a torch for Caroline, and everyone knew that Carol Lockwood would do anything to maintain the tenuous peace with the Originals.

Caroline floated out from the crowd, irritation creasing her lovely face until the moment she made it out on the floor. Then she turned a beaming smile on her town, a good sport as always, and said, "I would love to be a part of the first dance."

"The pleasure is all mine," Klaus accepted her extended hand and kissed it. As if by magic, the band started to play a sweeping waltz, and Klaus brought her into his arms with the ease of someone who had lived through many centuries of formality. Damon admitted, though only to himself, that Klaus was a very good dancer and that there was something familiar in the way he looked at Caroline. His eyes had longing tinged with stubbornness. They danced in unison, Caroline's long blue gown trailing behind her, and Klaus's fashion-forward wing-tipped shoes never faltering a stride. They were super-human in their grace, and it was beautiful.

"Wow," Elena's exhaled appreciation affirmed for him that the vision was lovely. When Klaus motioned for other couples to join them on the floor, and the music slowed to a more mangeable, plebian, slow waltz. Ordinarily, Damon would have cracked a joke with delivery so dry it could leave you parched, but right now, he was moved by the sight of Caroline swirling in Klaus's arms. He took Elena's hand wordlessly and pulled her onto the floor.

He had danced with her before, but this time was different. She accepted him without nervousness, followed his lead. He felt relief in her body. The slight vibration of human life hummed through her waist, and he could feel her heartbeat through her palm. Its reassuring drumming drowned out Eve's voice in his head.

"You look stunning, Elena," he whispered in her ear. She rewarded him with a blush as soft and pink as a carnation.

"Damon, don't," Her voice and her words did not match, but he respected everything she meant with that 'don't'. Don't confuse me right now. Don't ask anything of me that I cannot give. Don't make me say anything I will regret. Don't make me feel how I feel for you.

"I won't," he said.

He wanted to tell her that even the sight of her changed everything for him every day. Eve's voice would have driven him to madness in another part of his lifetime, but now, he had something more important to hold onto. He loved her; he wanted to tell her, but his voice had been his promise. He said nothing and just twirled her on the foyer floor.

X

Dean had eaten nine mini apple pies, drunk two glasses of expensive hard apple cider, and slurped down multiple furtive sips from his flask. Sam had said, "Really, dude?" but had laughed all the same. Dean leaned on the porch railing, looking out into the rain, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. The bow tie around his neck felt constricting, and he considered shedding it for mobility in a fight. Sam was more at home in this kind of attire, and he had even boldly headed to the dance floor with some redhead from town who looked to be several years his senior. Unaccustomed to being the third wheel, Dean had just come back out on the porch. Beside him was Bonnie Bennett, dressed in a solemn black number that did nothing to hide her beauty; the witch had a frown creasing her features.

"You can't relax either," he said, turning a glance her way.

"If something bad were to happen here, I would have no way of helping. Not without magic." Her voice was a hard line.

He was grateful that his weapons of choice were simpler; he had guns and knives strapped to him in a variety of places. Permanent calluses on his skin at the small of his back and on his ankle were evidence how often he concealed-carried.

"I've got your back if something happens tonight." That irritated him since just recently he had been gasping on the floor, about to die, thanks to the efforts of some unknown witch. His sympathy for the human side of witches was drained right now.

"Thanks," she turned her head to look at him, and worry flickered across her features. "I have another concern."

"What's that?"

"Castiel." The way she said his full name was reverent, and Dean cursed his stupid angel mentally. He should have known better. The night in the barn when Cas had come through double doors, black wings sprawled out against the backdrop of normalcy, he had announced his angelic purpose with inhuman confidence. Yet never again had Cas been that confident celestial being, not in Dean's eyes. Ever since Samhain had been loosed on Earth and Dean had refused to let angels nuke a town, Cas had struggled with what was right. His struggle made the world dangerous for him. He would never make a decision just for self-preservation – he had to have a moral justification for everything – so Dean made those choices for him. One of those chocies had been that no one here in Mystic freakin' Falls could know something as powerful as an angel was here. Cas knew that.

"I don't like that he's alone," Bonnie continued.

"He'll be fine," Dean said. He grunted at his doubts and leaned against the slick wet porch railing. His frown deepened.

Bonnie dropped her voice to a whisper. "Do you know how much damage Eve could do if she got her hands on an angel?"

The bottom of Dean's stomach wobbled and then plummeted. Cas was helpless without his powers - "a baby in a trenchcoat," if Dean used his own words. In assuming that coming here was the smartest course of action, they had all assumed that Eve would show up here, making it safer to leave Cas at the motel with pay-per-view. For the first time, Dean considered the possibility that Bonnie was suggesting: Eve might know exactly what was going on and might be after the lone angel rather than the heavily-populated party.

"She doesn't know about him. He's not a monster."

"We don't know if that's true. Cas and I... we've talked about how maybe she knows us. Like maybe she can feel us when she suppresses our magic? I can't hear her voice or anything, but I can sort of... feel her."

"Can Cas feel her?"

"He thinks so."

Dean could not believe what he was hearing. How could Cas think, for even a second, to keep something this colossal from him? Personal hurt aside, surely he could recognize the stupidity of this kind of secret-keeping. They were family.

"Have you called him?" Dean asked, reaching instinctively into his pocket as if he would suddenly feel a buzzing phone.

"I tried. He didn't answer."

"Get your umbrella." Dean moved without waiting for acceptance. As he walked back through the whirling ballroom, he called Sam and left a hushed voicemail. "Sammy, I am taking the witch and going to check on Cas. No worries. I'll call if I need anything."

Bonnie looked indignant at the "taking the witch" line but was obedient enough, following him to the car and folding herself inside while he held up her umbrella. He drove his way across town without cutting on the radio.

When he got to the hotel, he told Bonnie to wait in the car, and bless her, she actually listened. He ran his key card through the slot, barely waiting for the green light before opening the door with his shoulder. The tinny TV squawked on the dresser, but no one was in the chair across, watching. Closet door hanging open, bathroom light on, the room seemed to be unoccupied. Icy fear tightened in his chest. His heart gave rusty lurches inside his chest. He wanted to do something; he always _did_ something when the world seemed bleak, but he had no idea what to do. Castiel was not here, and he had no idea where he might be.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and listened to the thudding of his heart in his ears. Where do people begin looking for their fallen angel? Why had he been stupid enough to leave Cas alone and unguarded like this? There were a hundred ways his friend was unprepared to handle everything Eve represented. Sure, Cas could be a badass, even if Dean was never willing to admit that to his face, but he was an angel. These sorts of messy, entangled Earthly wars still confused him. He wasn't ready to deal with everything he might be staring down right now.

The door to the motel room opened again, and Bonnie stepped into the space. Her appearance, lux and stately, should have been comical in a run-down room like this, but Dean could not make himself even chuckle.

"He's not here," she said. Her sentence ran out of volume at the end, sputtering away like a car engine dying.

"No."

"What are we going to do?"

Dean rubbed his hand down his face and pulled his fingers over his scruffy chin. "I'm thinking."

She swallowed very hard, throat bobbling, but let him think. His phone buzzed in his pants pocket, and he pulled it out. Sam's name flashed across the screen. Dean dreaded saying anything about having lost Cas aloud, especially to Sam, but he answered anyway.

"Hello."

"Hey Dean. Where are you?"

"Didn't you get my voicemail?"

"I didn't notice you left one. Cas showed up here because he got worried about Bonnie, and now he's worried because he can't find her. Or you."

Dean stood up, angry and relieved at the same time. "Cas is there?"

Bonnie's head swiveled to look at him, and her lips parted. The smile unfurled on her mouth. Her reaction to good news was obviously not anger; Dean envied her that sincere reaction.

"Yeah," Sam confirmed. "He's here. He looks totally out of place in that trench coat, but he's here. He somehow caught a bus or something."

"Tell him to save a dance for Bonnie. We'll be back in a minute. We just... ran out," Dean did not bother to explain. They exchanged quick goodbyes and then hung up the phone.

True to his word, he squired Bonnie back to the majestic Harvest Ball. He ignored the pit of fear still in his stomach, that terrible feeling that had descended and taken root when he had thought one of his two best friends was missing. When he and Bonnie walked back into the dramatic foyer, he chuckled, the spell of fear broken. Cas had never looked quite so out of place. His trench coat was soaked since he had no umbrella, and water even dripped from his tie onto the floor. Unlike a human, he showed no response to the cold or damp, ignoring it so comfortably that it made onlookers uncomfortable. He was getting sideways looks from everyone in the room, or at least everyone who was not lost in the music in the other room. Dean felt like a parent who wanted to usher his child away from danger. Surely it was obvious to everyone that this man was no human.

"Hello Dean," Cas greeted. "Hello Bonnie."

Bonnie glided towards him, arms extended for a hug. He did not move to return it.

"Pretty girl wants to hug you, Cas. Open up your arms and let her." Dean let the last of his anger evaporate.

Cas obeyed, and Bonnie tucked herself into the wet embrace, smiling up at him. "I was worried about you."

"We both have reason to be nervous right now. There is bad energy in this town."

"The worst," she laughed. "Since we're both here, how about I show you a basic box step? No one's danced with me all night."

The angel agreed, and the two skirted away. Dean glanced up at Sam who looked utterly bemused. "Think she's...?" His little brother asked, smile so amused that it was nearly a laugh.

"God I hope not. Last thing we need is an interspecies romance."

"You enjoying your first ball?"

"Shut up, dick. Eve's not showing up, and I am wearing a tuxedo."

Dean felt like that description about summed up his evening, but he tolerated the rest of it like a champ, if he did say so himself. By the time they got back to the hotel room for the night, he had sore feet, a stomachache from too many apple-flavored foods, and a headache from the music. Sam changed for bed first, brushed his teeth, and crawled in. Before Dean did the same thing, he patted Cas's shoulder, still grateful he was not missing.

When he laid down in bed, he felt the burning restlessness of unproductivity. His pent-up energy buzzed against his insides as he stared at the ceiling and tried to think of a way to make sure tomorrow was not another bust.

X

Castiel waited all night the night after the ball for the Winchesters to wake up. Nothing good was on the television, and even if it had been, he might not have been able to concentrate on it. The uncomfortable feeling across his skin was still there. That same feeling had prompted him to rush to the ball last night to check on Bonnie. Eve knew what they were all up to; he had no idea how he could know such a thing without angelic prescience, but he felt confident that the monster knew their moves. She was watching their chess moves and countering them silently, triggering monsters to feed on innocent people, avoiding the locations where they hoped to find her. She was winning, in her own way.

The next day, though, Dean woke up ready to swing. He drank a huge cup of coffee, ate three muffins from the continental breakfast, and spent a long hour on the phone with Bobby. Cas wanted to eavesdrop on that rather than wait patiently in the chair for Sam to shower and piddle around on searchtheweb, but he had not been invited. Moving into Dean's space uninvited was never a wise move.

At 9 a.m., Dean announced an absolutely insane plan with such a chipper grin that Cas wondered if the man had lost his grip on sanity. After everything he had been through, the eldest Winchester was entitled to a mental breakdown. Sam asked probing questions but seemed to buy the plan as acceptable. By 11 a.m., they were having a pow-wow with Elena, Alaric, Bonnie, and Caroline to explain the plan to them. The others looked baffled by the plan but accepted the Winchesters' authority. Cas acknowledged privately that human reaction to the Winchesters often ran towards obedience; the Winchester gospel Chuck had been writing may have been very successful if another reality had been created and the Apocalypse had occurred.

The only snag in the new plan occurred when the Mystic Falls natives began to discuss who would come along. Despite the protests of Sam and Dean, they decided on Caroline. Elena felt she should stay close to Stefan, Bonnie wished to continue working on her research, and Alaric would not say a clear reason but Dean would later explain that the man wanted to be near Elena to keep an eye on her and keep her safe. Castiel remembered when he had once believed that a loving father was looking out for him as well. Instead, He had abandoned his early children and his later ones, leaving wars, pain, and struggle on Earth as it is in Heaven.

"Explain the plan to me again," Caroline was asking from her place in the backseat beside Cas. She was leaned forward against the front seat of the Impala. They had been on the road for less than hour, and already the car was terse with crisscrossing controversies. Dean's face was stony, so Sam answered in his place.

"Bobby found a journal in storage that belonged to Samuel Colt. You know who that is?"

"Nope." The blonde seemed cheerful about her ignorance. It was the opposite from how Bonnie had felt about ignorance while they were in the library. She had worked hard to correct her ignorance and learn what she did not know. Cas did not know if the girls were different from one another or the types of ignorance were different from one another.

"He's a famous gunmaker who lived in the 1800s. He's a hero to hunters, made some powerful relics," Sam explained. "Like a pistol that can gank just about anything."

Dean muttered under his breath, "Except freakin' Lucifer."

"What?" Even with advanced vampiric hearing, Caroline's ears did not catch Dean's grumbling. Castiel hid a smile.

"Nothing." Dean drummed his fngers on the wheel as he drove.

Sam pressed on, "Anyway, so Colt has a journal, and in it, he says that he shot a phoenix on March 5, 1861. We're going to travel back then to try to get some of the ashes."

"Seriously?" Caroline flipped her blonde curls over her shoulder and flashed those blue-green eyes. "That plan doesn't make any more sense with another explanation. How the hell are we supposed to time travel?"

Castiel knew Bonnie had been a faithful friend to him, keeping the secrets about who and what he was from her lifelong friends. With that piece of knowledge, the plan made more sense, but he still disliked it. Playing in time was dangerous, murky business even when connected closely with Heaven. His current estrangement meant he had no options if he lost touch with the people he had sent to the past; it also meant he could not accompany them. When he had made the journey with Dean to the 1970s, he had been backed by the Heavenly host and the surge of power from God's plan. Now he would be using only his own reserves, and the only way they would know if those reserves were enough would be if it worked. There was no way to give this a trial run.

He also felt uncomfortable sending both the vampire and Dean back together. It would not surprise him if only one came back alive, and if he were to follow the human custom of betting, he would have put his money on Dean.

"It's a good plan," Sam almost managed to keep all reservation out of his voice, but his heart betrayed him, skittering through one extra bump. Cas wondered if Caroline could hear that. "Though this is going to be a long drive to Tennessee to meet Bobby."

"Ugh. Couldn't he just meet us in Mystic Falls?" Caroline sounded for all the world like a normal spoiled teenager, but Dean whirled on her as if she were Lucifer himself.

"Listen up, blondie," he said, "You're coming because Team Vampire Buddies thinks a representative needs to be present for me to do my damn job, not because I am a member of your fan club. In fact, I am probably the farthest thing from a fan of yours that you can get. I don't trust vampires. I've met harmless ones – you know, cow-tipping types – but you're not one of those. You drink human blood. You are actually a parasite at best, a predator at worst. At the most basic level, I am a cheeseburger to you, and that makes me want to put as much distance between us as possible. So if driving a few hours in my car makes you uncomfortable, well, then, that just about makes us even."

Caroline looked as though she had been slapped across the face. For the first time, Cas felt her emotions as if she were human. She burned with embarrassment, stifled anger, and sadness. Many times he had watched humans comfort one another with touch, so he reached over to put his hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at him with tears welling up in her eyes.

"Dean," Cas reprimanded. "Cruelty is not going to make our difficult task any easier."

Sam glanced back at him approvingly. "Cas is right."

Castiel was a warrior; he had been commended for excellence in heavenly battle. Yet this simple set of three words from Sam Winchester floated to him and made him almost smile. The words themselves felt warm, familial. Though he had brothers and sisters en masse, it was not the kind of relationship he had witnessed between Sam and Dean, but for just this moment, he felt like a Winchester, like a middle brother who understood big brother's hard line and sternness but also appreciated the softer, kinder side of little brother.

Cas smiled even as Dean glared at him in the rearview and muttered, "Traitor."

 **AN:** I could use some of your feedback on perspective. Are the multiple perspectives working? Are there too many of them? Too few? Is the pace too fast, too slow, or just right? Give me a little bit of Goldilocks criticism (even if it to say it is "just right") and I will be so grateful. Thank you!


	6. Chapter VI

Elena rarely allowed herself to feel deep sadness anymore. There was too much to be done for that. However, today, she sat in the rain at her parents' grave and let herself feel the loss. Her parents had been good people; they had loved and supported her fiercely. They had also been members of the the Founders' Council, and she often wondered what they would think of the young woman she had become. Would they understand that her choices were borne of necessity and love? Would they be able to see the humanity inside the inhuman? The place inside of her that was still gentle and innocent believed that they would. Her more pragmatic side knew that they would condemn her choices. Yet even knowing that, she believed she was right. She believed that Stefan, Damon, Caroline, and yes, even Klaus and his family were responsible for their own actions. They were not slaves to cosmic, evil forces; most of the time, they managed their morality autonomously, just like humans.

Their good could be overwhelming. At the ball, Damon had wanted nothing more than to kiss her. She could tell that just by looking at him, and yet he had refrained. He had just given her an evening of safety and taken her home. He was a vampire, a murderer, and also a gentleman. Existence was complicated, no matter your species.

"Hey, 'lena," Bonnie's voice was gentle. "You about ready to go? My shoes are completely soaked through."

Elena smiled at her. Bonnie resonated confidence again now that the ball was over and a "mission team" was on their way to save them all. After all, she loved the movie Armaggeddon and other quasi-apocalyptic films and believed in the greater good.

"I'm ready. It was probably silly to leave flowers in this rain, but Jeremy asked me to. From out west, he can't exactly understand this..." Elena rose to her feet and motioned to the weather around them. The droplets falling on her hand were cool to the touch, bearing that first nip of autumn.

"I'm here and can't understand this," Bonne held out her hand to help Elena up, an appreciated gesture on the slick ground. Once their hands were together, the warmth and ease of human touch felt good, and Elena tucked her arm through Bonnie's. Their waterproof coats slurped and squeaked against one another as they started to walk.

"It really makes you wonder, doesn't it? Why Mystic Falls?"

"It has to be the Originals. We were a pretty normal little town, even with a handful of vampires, until Katherine brought them here. Then it just snowballed."

"Yeah," Bonnie sighed. They walked the muddy path towards the cemetary parking lot, slipping and sliding a little on the worn path. Other people had obviously not let rain deter them from visiting their loved ones' graves. The skies above them brightened as they walked, so subtly at first that they could not see it, but by the time they emerged from the dripping overhangs, Elena realized she could see the sun pressing through the clouds and the drops were slowing to a drizzle.

"Look, Bon, the sun!" She remembered reading Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" in a school and now knew how the denizens of the planet must have felt when they finally got their day of warmth and light. Each ray luxuriated in its own freedom, dancing through the fallen raindrops and water-slicked cars in the parking lot. Even the pavement glistened. Elena pushed back her hood and shook her hair loose. Overhead, the clouds split, and the sun shyly crept out, bit by bit, until its full paegentry was visible.

Like children, they shed their raincoats right there and stood in thrall of the sun, smiling close-eyed upwards into its warmth.

"I was starting to wonder if I'd ever see the sun again myself." The creaky voice that interrupted their frolic came from a woman getting out of her car. She moved with the measured, hesitant step of someone whose body had lost all elasticity. Deep wrinkles creased every inch of her dark skin, but her brown eyes snapped with life. She wore a garish yellow raincoat that made her look like the Gordon's Fisherman.

"Hi Mrs. Cubbins. What are you doing out in this weather?" Bonnie smiled and approached, wrapping the older woman in a genuine hug. Elena knew that Mrs. Cubbins had been close friends with Bonnie's Grams. The two older women had gossiped and played bridge through swathes of Bonnie and Elena's childhood.

"Visiting the graves of everyone who went home ahead of me, my sweet." Mrs. Cubbins touched Bonnie's cheek affectionately and then looked to Elena. "How are you, Miss Gilbert?"

"I'm good. How are you?"

"Tired. This bad weather has been weighing on me heavy of late." Mrs. Cubbins shook her head. Her tight grey curls bobbled.

"I understand. It's hard to get out when the rain is like that." Bonnie nodded.

Mrs. Cubbins turned those extraordinarily clear eyes to meet theirs, and it was as if she grew before their eyes, swelling from the tiny, adorable old woman to a version of herself with greater power. "Not the rain. It is hard to get out when there is evil like that about... It is gone for now."

Her voice on the word evil sent shivers down Elena's spine.

"Evil? What do you know?" Bonnie was incredulous.

"Sheila and I did more than play bridge on Thursdays, and I am a good deal older than she was."

"You're a witch," Elena replied. It bothered her to think of this kindly old woman – with her church-going and secret potato salad recipe – as tangled up in the supernatural elements of this town.

"I have been called worse. I prefer the word Obeah," Mrs. Cubbins sparkled now, looking at Bonnie for the shock that she knew would be there. Elena had no idea why her friend looked so staggered, but Bonnie quickly asked Mrs. Cubbins if she would mind having them over for tea. The elderly woman answered in the affirmative, face set as if this was just what she was expecting, and they got into their separate cars. As Elena climbed into Bonnie's passenger side, she looked at her friend.

"I don't understand, Bon. Obeah? What does that mean?"

"Obeah is a special kind of witchcraft. A very old kind. I only discovered it recently while doing research with Cas. The witches who are trained in Obeah – they're powerful, but they are also psychic. The magic is part of them in a way that us normal practicing witches can't imagine," Bonnie pulled onto the main road. Cars were filtering out of driveways, the town coming back to life with the arrival of the sun.

"Rare witchcraft? What does that mean?" Elena asked not for the meaning of the phrase, but for the greater meaning of it all being here in Mystic Falls. It was a question to which Bonnie could have no real answer.

"It means I think it is no coincidence that Mrs. Cubbins was there when we were. We need to ask her some questions. Elena, did you hear her say the evil is gone?"

"Yes." The sun looked suddenly traitorous, not a sign of beauty and relief but of foreboding.

"What are the chances Eve is gone because she's following Sam, Dean, Cas, and Caroline?"

That question took Elena's breath away.

By the time they had arrived at Mrs. Cubbins house, Elena was so nervous her hands were shaking. The older woman had a conventional Southern home with a wrap-around porch and too many overdue home repairs. The shutters begged to be painted, and the trim hung at an angle that any thoughtful neighbor could have fixed. Inside the front parlor, they saw traditional wallpaper on the walls and too many florals on the furniture, but Mrs. Cubbins did not stop there. She guided them instead through the traditional visiting spaces and into the kitchen. There the traditional ended; or rather, the traditional elements that everyone liked to embrace and admire ended. Hoodoo talismans hung above the stove, brightly colored and presented as decorations, and an honest-to-God cauldron rested on the countertop over a modern Bunsen burner.

Mrs. Cubbins ushered them into chairs at the kitchen table and opened the fridge to pour two tall glasses of iced tea. Her sprightliness now defied the feebleness she had shown for several years now, and Elena wondered if maybe the elderly-woman-too-frail-for-anything was a part of what she wanted people to see. It did not seem to be reality.

When the woman set the cut glass in front of Elena, the girl lifted it to her lips and took a sip. The tea was so sweet it actually made her pucker, covering her surprise with a quick hand to her mouth as she choked it down. Bonnie chuckled at her but did not risk a sip of her own. They waited patiently for Mrs. Cubbins to take her own seat, glass in hand, and start talking.

"You can call me Eula, if we're going to be talking honest-like," she began. Elena had never noticed how many rings the woman wore on her left hand, one thick gold band on the index, middle, and ring finger, but the metal glinted now as she moved her hand. "The South has always had its share of witches – some of us blessed enough to have been trained Obeah by our foremothers – but now it is an individual calling. We used to be a community of creators. We explored the tenets of nature, wrote new spells, tested our theories. We created, not merely used, magic."

"Eula," Bonnie leaned to her side, reaching into the messenger bag at her side and pulling out a musty green book. "Do you recognize this?"

A smile creased the old woman's face, and she held out her hands for the book. When she folded her palms around it, her hands seemed to relax, melding to the faded cover lovingly. "It has been a long time since I saw this. It was archived in the special collection long before your Grams came to the college."

"Yeah. I stole it."

"Did you need it?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good girl," Eula turned the worn pages while she spoke, fingering specific sections of words. "These books belong in hands that will use them."

"Ma'am," Elena cut in uncomfortably, ripe with questions but hesitant to speak as a non-witch. Again her humanity felt like a liability. "Do you know anything about the evil that has been in our town?"

Eula closed the book, touched the cover one more time, and then slid it back to Bonnie. "I know something has escaped from Purgatory. It has touched down here in town, and it has tried to bring out our evil. But though there have been some casualties," she paused, raising one finger and wagging it at the each girl, "so far it has not triumphed."

Those words shone a light on the situation in such a way that it made both girls smile. In the midst of the blood, the corpse of a child, the voice throbbing in their friends' heads, they had forgotten to frame it that way: Eve had not yet won.

The three women sat together at the kitchen table, thumbing through the pages of the book and talking. Elena was too young to recognize the tradition of this kind of conversation. It was as much a part of hoodoo as the magic and materials themselves. An older woman, elderly but still sharp as a tack, would sit with the next generation, or even the one after that, and share with them her secrets. She would spin stories to describe evil and the good that must combat it, and when the young women went away, they would use the knowledge of the past to change the world. That was hoodoo itself.

Several hours slipped by before Elena realized that if Eve was gone – however briefly – Stefan might be himself again. He might be sitting in the basement now, begging for someone to come set him free. He might remember what he had done.

She drummed her fingers on the table, distracted by all of her concerns. Eula looked at her knowingly and placed her hands on top of her guest's, steadying them.

"Bonnie, I'm getting tired, and Elena needs you to take her over to the old Salvatore boarding house. She's remembered someone who needs her right now."

They said goodbye with hugs and promises to reconvene very soon. Even with the nerves in her stomach fluttering at what might await her at the Salvatores', Elena felt the comfort of having a force like this witch on her side.

Eula Cubbins was something special.

X

"Check this out."

Sam turned in the direction of his brother's voice and nearly spit out some of his Coke. Dean had on a cowboy hat, a wide-brimmed black Stetson that no real country boy would have been caught dead in, and was grinning his most boyish grin. Sam had never been one to consume pop culture with the eagerness Dean had. If Sam was inclined to take a pop-psychologist approach – something he did often where his brother was concerned – he would guess that Dean liked watching a world over which he had no responsibilty or control. Western movies had always been one of his favorite vices, and he had seen every Clint Eastwood movie more times than any one person should.

"That's ridiculous. You can't buy it," Sam turned over a less expensive and more reasonable brown hat in his hand.

"Like hell I can't." They both flinched slightly at the use of the word hell, the smallest of twinges that would only have been visible to someone who had known to look for it. Sam did not have to glance over at Castiel to know that he would have noticed it. In the oddest moments, the angel could be very perceptive.

"We have to blend in. Buying the Liberace of cowboy hats won't help."

"You ruin everything," Dean groused.

They were in a country-western store in a strip mall. The store was crammed, merchandise stuffed haphazardly along all four walls, and it had probably never seen three patrons at the same time. Whenever they moved, they had to pass each other shoulder to shoulder. Castiel was standing stiffly in the center of the store, holding the items Dean was pulling from the shelf. So far, he had grabbed chaps, boots, and some sort of embroidered shirts. No one had grabbed anything for Caroline who was next door getting a smoothie.

Sam started perusing for clothing that might fit her, an uncomfortable sensation if ever there was one. As he lifted up a shirt, he tried to recall what size she was. Did this width look about right? Caroline was not as petite as Jess, and she had worn a size... He suddenly realized he did not remember what size clothing had been strewn around their college apartment. A sharp, sweet ache struck at the blurry memory of Jessica. Her voice had been gone for years; in his memories, he could hear himself, but her unique way of speaking had been replaced by a generic female voice. Her face was clear because he still had pictures, and her style had been so one-of-a-kind it was unforgettable. He stared at the garment tag of the shirt in his hand and pushed one last time to recall Jess's size. When he had no luck, he eyeballed the shirt again and tucked it under his arm. Close enough.

By the time they had gathered everything they needed and loaded it on the counter, they had amassed an embarrassingly large pile. A clerk came to the counter, a bubble gum-popping fifteen year old in a camouflage shirt and neon orange hat. He started ringing up the items with a raised eyebrow.

"Y'all going to a costume party?"

"Not exactly," Sam reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. "Are you a hunter?"

His question was based on the hat and the camouflage and had nothing to do with the supernatural, and yet it was enough to make his brother chuckle behind him. The kid behind the counter lit up as well.

"Yes sir. Bow season starts next week. My dad is closing the store for the week, and we're going to spend the whole time hunting." He scanned the items while he talked and then looked up expectantly. The pile totaled to $284.58.

"That sounds nice," Sam swiped a card that bore the name Cyrus Smith. Approved popped up on the screen of the card reader without even requiring a signature. Cyrus must have a very high credit limit. They started grabbing their bags as the receipt printed.

"Enjoy hunting with your dad next week, kid," Dean said as they walked out. Sam could tell from the set of his shoulders that he was thinking; he was probably remembering hunting with Dad and hunting with Bobby, one of the paranormal variety and one to put meat in the freezer. Rather than letting himself do the same, Sam pushed the thoughts aside.

Caroline was leaning against the Impala, sipping from her smoothie, and she greeted them without any warmth, climbing back into the backseat with Cas while the brothers made room in the trunk for their new gear. The hours in the car so far had been long and uncomfortable. Dean had eventually given in and cut music on, and Sam had worked a crossword puzzle, but it had not been enough to relieve the swelling pressure of friction between Caroline and Dean. Now they only had an hour left before they got to the rendevous point: a hunting cabin Bobby had borrowed from a friend.

This next hour was a lesson in Einstein's theory of relativity. If a minute with your hand on a hot stove felt like an hour, an hour in the car with Dean Winchester and a vampire felt like three weeks. Silently, Sam counted roadside signs, played the license plate game with himself, and drank the last soda he had left rolling around in the floorboard. By the time they pulled off the secondary highway onto a dirt lane, he was ready to kiss the ground when he finally got to step out of the car onto it.

"You're really comfortable with silence," Caroline was observing to Castiel, who turned his gaze on her.

"Yes. We do not lose track of emotional tension because of noise, so it has less value for us."

"Damn it, Cas." Dean's eyes closed, and he dropped his head backwards.

"What?" Caroline looked confused.

"Dean does not want me revealing that I am not human to anyone."

"I knew you weren't human from the second we got in this car. You don't have a smell," Caroline sniffed and looked anywhere but the rearview mirror where she would have seen Dean looking at her. "I'm polite enough not to ask what you are, though. Some people are not speciesist."

Sam chuckled, admiring her spunk, but had to admit he was glad she did not know precisely what Castiel was. Angels sounded terrifying, all-powerful, perfect as ultimate weapons in war, but they were much more complicated than that, especially Cas.

The cabin emerged in front of them, rustic if you were kind and filthy if you were honest. Bobby was in a battered pickup truck today. It was parked cockeyed in front of the cabin; the front tire crushed a hearty patch of bluets, separating wide leaves from tiny flowers.

Sam unfolded from the passenger seat first, extending his right knee hard and earning himself a nice loud pop. Cars were not designed for people his height. He moved towards the door quickly, and he felt all the enthusiasm of coming home. Silly though it was, bringing Bobby into the situation made him feel as though it could be fixed. They could stop Eve if they had their old curmudgeon on the task. It was the faith of a child, but it felt good coursing through his veins.

Bobby's head appeared in the window, peering out to confirm their identities. When he appeared in the doorway next, he was almost smiling. Dean reached him first, clapping him into a hug before stepping aside to let Sam do the same. Bobby might have only come to Sam's shoulder, but he dug his fingers into his surrogate son's back with that hard pull of a father.

"I'm glad you're here, Bobby," Sam said as they parted. Bobby even gave Castiel a fatherly slap on the shoulder, though the angel did not reciprocate. Bobby's eyes went to Caroline next. She looked fresh-faced and innocent, clothes rumpled from long hours in the car and blonde curls accentuating the most delicate of her features. "This is Caroline. She's a friend of Alaric's, as you know."

Bobby also knew she was a vampire, but Sam knew that was a part better left unspoken. This situation was one where it was easier for everyone to just silently know that everyone else knew. No one needed to call anyone else out for being, say, a vampire or an angel. It was enough to make Sam miss being soulless; with what he remembered of it, he been unconcerned about others' emotional states.

"It's nice to meet you, Caroline," Bobby said, his mouth moving slowly. His eyes were not unkind.

"It's nice to meet you too, Mr. Singer."

"Call me Bobby. Everyone does," he looked toward Dean and cracked a bit of a joke, "At least the little bit of everyone that I know."

With that bit of warmth out in the air, they all headed inside and thus began a strange evening. The plan was to have dinner, organize their materials, and then zap back to 1865. Bobby had made Hamburger Helper, and he sloughed it onto paper plates with a plastic ladle he had found in one of the drawers. Dean ate absently while cleaning his hand gun, and Castiel sat in the corner, deep in some sort of thought. Sam and Caroline actually sat down beside one another on the holey red couch and spooned the food into their mouths, silent for a long time. Beers were passed all around, even to the eternal teenager in the room.

"Have you ever time traveled?" She finally asked, glancing over at him.

He slugged back his beer. "Yeah. I've been to the 1970s. Lots of patterned shirts and disco music."

"What was it like to travel? How is it done?" Caroline set her bowl on the coffee table and tenatively picked up her own half-finished beer.

"I suppose it's magic. Time is apparently a system that is continuous, so you can be plopped in at any point. Though I suppose," he paused and considered it academically, "I suppose you cannot go back in time unless you had already gone back in time in the past. As in the only way we can go back in time is because we always had gone back in time. So even though we are just fulfilling it here in the future, it has already happened in the past. It's a paradox. It should be impossible."

Caroline chuckled. "That is a really theoretical answer. I was more asking like... does it hurt? How will it feel? Stuff like that."

Sam noticed yet again how pretty and human she seemed when talking to her like this. "It doesn't hurt. Does make you nauseous."

"I can handle that." She switched the beer bottle with the styrofoam cup her smoothie had been in earlier. As she took a long sip, Sam saw red race up the straw. Jolted, he realized it was human blood. Somehow, without drawing any attention to herself, Caroline had filled her empty cup with some AB negative. His stomach turned, but as she sipped, he thought past his discomfort to see the teenager she was. He shifted on his butt bones and let his curiosity risk rudeness.

"Caroline, may I ask you a question?"

"You just did," She smiled. He had to smile too; that was his joke.

"How did you die?"

She sucked in a long breath, and over her shoulder, Sam saw Dean look up from packing salt shells to listen as well. Caroline's smile did not fade, but it wavered on her lips.

"That's kinda a sad story. Like the saddest one I've got."

"I'd like to know, if you're willing to tell me."

"Just tell me if I'm talking too much, okay? I tend to ramble." Her self-deprecating tone did not hide the tremor in her voice. "There was a festival in town. You know small towns, we love our festivals. I mean, you know that, you just attended an apple ball after all."

He raised an eyebrow, and she refocused her words.

"Tyler was driving his SUV through town – Tyler's my ex-boyfriend, you haven't met him – and all of a sudden, he just wigged out and wrecked the car. I was in the passenger seat, and my head slammed into the dashboard. It was bad. Like in a coma bad. They rushed me to the hospital, but I was dying."

Sam closed his eyes and imagined this girl as a frail human, bashing headfirst into the dash of a moving vehicle. She would have bled, probably from the nose and mouth, and bruised. It would have been terrible pain, the most terrible pain of her life to that point. Her childhood would not have been like his. He had known intense pain from his earliest youth, but that car accident would probably have been her first taste of bloody agony. Imagining her that way now was hard to do; she emanated something very different.

"I didn't know about... any of this." She waved her hand, motioning around the room. "Not really. Elena had been with Stefan for a while though, and she knew he was a vampire and that their blood heals and all that. So when they got to the hospital, they let Damon feed me his blood to keep me from dying. It worked. I woke up to all these doctors saying it was a miracle and my mom crying and hugging me."

Vampires are born into their afterlife if they die a human death with their sire's blood in their system. Sam remembered that piece of Hunting 101 logic from his earliest days on Dad's knee. As an adult now, Sam could recognize that his father had still been learning during his son's young childhood. His knowledge of lore had been without nuance or exception yet, so he had been eager to teach something, anything, to his sons. It must have been his way of whistling in the dark. Sam realized Caroline had stopped talking.

"If you made a miraculous recovery, then how did you die?"

Her eyes watered a little, and Sam realized there was fear on her face. She was scared remembering the night she died.

"I had to stay in the hospital to be watched after the trauma and everyone had gone home to get some sleep because I was going to be fine. I was lying in my room when I saw a girl come in who looked just like Elena. I remember speaking to her, thinking it was her, and then she stood over me and her face changed and suddenly got so cold. She really looked like pure evil, and she tilted her head sideways." Unconsciously, Caroline mimicked her own words, tilting her own head and looking blankly down at nothing in her lap. "She said to tell the Salvatores that she had a message for them: 'Game on'. And then she grabbed my pillow and she suffocated me."

Caroline wavered on the verge of tears for a second and then shook her head, forcing herself to perk back up. "But anyway, the rest is history. Turns out that was Elena's evil doppleganger, Katherine, and vampires are real, and human blood is not so easy to come by as you might think." She pushed out a chuckle, but Sam could not laugh.

"I'm sorry," he said. When he looked up again, Dean was still looking this direction, and Sam knew his brother had heard every word. It was a different perspective from the one they usually got.

"It's okay. I'm good at being a vampire now. At least when Eve's voice isn't pounding in my head," Caroline picked up her paper plate and put her hand on Sam's as well, glancing at him. He nodded, and she picked it up. "Don't feel sorry for me."

Sam watched her walk to the trashcan and throw the plates away. As if she had suddenly realized the room was quiet, she looked around from person to person.

"Did everyone hear that?" Her voice was small.

"Yes." Castiel, who was the farthest away, answered in the affirmative, making it obvious that everyone had, in fact, been listening. "It is abominable you had to die that way."

"Sure is," Bobby echoed. His face looked a little older than it had before. Then he smacked his calloused palms together. "Now that you've got full bellies, it's time for you to get changed, I reckon."

"Time to get this dog and pony show on the road," Dean agreed, standing up and slapping his hands against his thighs. Sam smiled at the similarity of the two men and grabbed the bags to start pulling out the clothes. "Here you go, Caroline," he said, tossing her a pair of khaki pants. "Dean, this blanket is yours."

"It's a sarape," Dean caught it in the air with his free hand, his other one already holding, pants, a hat, and boots, and grinned. "I'm gonna look badass in it."

He walked into the single bathroom of the cabin and shut the door. Sam looked at Bobby.

"We're going to have a long 24 hours with him thinking he's Clint Eastwood," Sam said.

"Idjit." Bobby rounded out the conversation heartily, shooing them in separate directions to get dressed. Sam took the hallway so that Caroline could go into the bedroom and have the privacy of a door. Sam slid on itchy wool-based trousers and wondered why he wasn't more nervous. Time travel was sticky, scary. Yet he felt as cool and calm about it as a walk in the park. Perhaps it was just that he was glad that they finally had a plan to carry through. Well, that and the fact that if he stopped rustling fabric and listened, he could hear something outdoors besides rain. Reprieve from Eve's unrelenting weather was a relief.

Sam could not quite bring himself to put the hat on his head, even once dressed, and he walked back out into the kitchen. Bobby snorted, scratching his beard.

"You look mighty dashing, Mr. Winchester," he said. He laughed again and drank his beer. Dean came out of the bathroom now, arms extended with all the pride of a runway model. He was wearing his sarape and his hat. "You look ridiculous."

"I look freakin' awesome," Dean corrected. He did a strange little two step, tapping his shiny boots on the floor, and then grinned. "Man, this is going to be great. It's about damn time we got to do something fun."

Castiel frowned. "Dean, moving multiple beings through space and time for the purpose of finding a rare historical monster is not likely to be great or fun."

"I get that, man. I'm being an optimist," Dean said.

"Oh. Then yes," Cas smiled so awkwardly that Sam cringed. "This will be fun."

X

It was like the Scooby Doo gang on crack. Dean started ticking off the labels in his mind. Sam with his mop of hair was Shaggy, Bobby with his spell books and general know-how was Velma, Caroline with her hot bod was Daphne, he himself was Fred, and as the least human of the bunch, Cas would have to be Scoob. This odd assembly of ghostbusters was going to be time traveling. Dean thought about actually observing aloud how much this plan resembled a bad direct-to-video movie, but he held his tongue.

"I do not think I will be able to move myself through the plane this time," Cas said. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking at them all. "I am not at full strength, and I need to ensure enough for the return journey. Moving humans – and human-like creatures – is easier than moving..." He stopped short of identifying himself and looked at Caroline, then Dean.

Dean would normally have taken this opportunity to be flippant, but the normal smoothness of Cas's face was bent by sharp creases of concern. The angel was afraid he would not be able to do this, afraid he was going to get his humans killed, and yet he was still trying to respect the rules his friends had established for him about keeping his secret. He was a being with the power to bend time and space, but he was also humble and willing to concede where he needed others' knowledge. Dean figured you had to admire that.

"It's alright. We'll do our job there, and you'll do yours here," he said, adjusting his sarape. He was ready.

"Yeah. You and Bobby can make it work on this end," Sam agreed.

"Okay. Are you all ready?" Cas's voice deepened, and he started to glow. The light was faint, emanating from just beneath his skin.

Dean looked over at Caroline. "Bend your knees, vamp," His tone had no menace. "It'll help with the nausea."

Cas' blue eyes had lost all trace of humanity now, bright as twin crystals as light from within shone through them. He lifted his hands, and in that moment, there was a loud, thunderous clap.

Behind Cas's left shoulder, a dark figure appeared. Though only milliseconds passed, Dean felt as though time slowed, giving him the opportunity to identify the interloper. Raphael's vessel looked worse than before, skin worn thin across the bones and eye sockets sunken, but the angel that looked through the eyes burned with hatred.

"Dean, go!"

Dean felt rather than heard Castiel's voice as he swirled away. The sensation of losing his feet came first, and then the rest of him fell away into nothingness. No more than a few seconds passed before his feet came back, pressing into sandy, solid ground. His vision did not appear immediately, but he doubled over, swallowing back bile and nausea. Vomit crawled up his throat, escaping his tortured stomach, and he spewed it over the ground. As his eyes slowly regained sight, he continued to vomit, clutching his abdomen in his shaking hands. Traveling through time had never felt like this before.

A muffled moan startled Dean, and he turned his head in its direction. Caroline was on her knees in the dirt, holding her head and quivering. All her strength and focus seemed to be invested in not crying. Ice flooded through Dean's veins as the impact of the moment struck.

"Sam?" He called out. "Sam?"

Hist stomached heaved, and he puked again. Righting himself, he wiped the back of his arm against his mouth. "Sammy?" He shouted this time, and the sound of his voice seemed to echo in the empty night around him.

"I think it's just us," Caroline rasped. She held her hand up, and without thinking about it, he gripped it and helped her to her feet.

Dean put his hands on top of his head and measured his breathing in and out, pushing away the nausea and the panic. If it was truly just he and Caroline here – wherever here was – then Sam, Cas, and Bobby were there with Raphael. They could be dead. If Cas had applied his power to moving them and had only managed to move these two, then the others truly could be dead. Dean knew he was a grunt, and introspection would not help anyone right now. He did not need to brain this situation to death. Action was distraction.

"Are you okay?" He looked at Caroline. She nodded, but her lower lip trembled. It was so pitifully feminine that it only added to Dean's fear. He opted to ignore the tremor and answer the nod.

"Good. We seem to be in the middle of freakin' nowhere."

She did not respond. He pushed his shaky legs into motion, and she followed. They were on dirt at the edge of woods, and at the edge of the horizon, there were a few lights flickering. Dean's Western movie knowledge was not quite enough for him to confirm that they were in the 1860s, but he suspected it. Even with the faint lights on the horizon, he was looking into darkness unmatched in the digital era. The quiet was jarring too. He could hear his footsteps reverberating against the expanse.

"What time do you think it is?" Caroline spoke now. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she also leaned over and retched. The bile was bright red. Its effect on Dean would have been comical if it did not hurt. As it was, he saw the macabre color of her vomit and bent over himself to throw up for what he hoped would be the last time. He coughed twice low in his chest and straightened back up to answer her question.

"I don't know. Why?"

"I don't think the 1800s had 24-hour motels." Her voice was incredibly weak now, and he looked over at her with greater concern.

"Are you okay?" He repeated the question.

This time, she stopped, putting a hand on his arm. He thought she was going to say something to him, but he realized that her trembling body was using his to steady itself. Her eyes were cloudy. He put his hands up to her just in time for her to pass out, dropping into his arms. That welling panic inside of him grew. How was he supposed to handle all this? What was he supposed to do? He couldn't carry her to town. Even if he could, should he? Was town the place to look for Samuel Colt and the Phoenix? Was that even still the smartest goal considering he had no idea how they could even get back?

Holding Caroline's limp form out in front of him, he looked up at the sky and saw unbelievably beautiful stars. They were clearer, prettier, but they were the same stars he had seen every night his entire life. Their presence settled him back down, and he set to work.


	7. Chapter VII

Stefan had been silent for nearly ten hours. Elena had been intermittently counting. At first, she was talking to him, then watching the clock steadily, but eventually, she had no option but to walk around upstairs, eat something for dinner, wonder about the trip to 1865, and then yet again come down to wait. Even though she and Damon had untied him hours ago, he had not moved. His eyes stared straight ahead, dull and unblinking. She didn't know his reason for the tortured silence. It could have been guilt, pain, or something else entirely. The enigma of it tugged at her heartstrings.

Sitting against the wall watching him was her only option. The hard concrete rubbed against Elena's shoulder blades, and the backs of her knees had sweated through her jeans from so long in the same position. Her eyes drooped. It was only 11 p.m., but silence is its own lullaby. She swayed forward and then caught herself. She tried to drum her fingers on the cold floor to keep herself awake, but they quieted every few seconds

"Elena." Damon spoke from beside her, and she turned to look at him through eyes that she could barely keep open. He squatted down low, and in his face, she again saw the promise to take care of her. Yet all he said was, "You should go to bed."

"I can't."

He nodded and wordlessly stood back up. His back cracked as he straightened his body, spine becoming a resolute line. He walked over to Stefan with the slow circle of a predator, but when he got to his brother, he simply clapped him on the shoulder.

"You're punishing her by brooding like this. Not yourself. Her. You can desiccate down here, but it's kicking Elena in the teeth, and it is not bringing those people back." Damon leaned in closer. "It's not going to bring that kid back, brother."

Damon released Stefan and walked out of the room. The sounds of his footsteps faded away as he moved upstairs.

Elena looked over at Stefan. His eyes were closed now, muscles rigid. She wanted to say something, but Damon had somehow managed to understand the situation and say for her everything that needed to be said. Stefan took in the world so deeply, drinking down every moment, that even routine pain and sadness could burrow under his skin. To face the reality that he had murdered again must ache in his very bones. Through his memories, he would be unable to prevent reliving Winston Smith's death. That murder could play on a loop in his mind. If she was honest with herself, Elena knew she was struggling to forget it too, even without any real images. Damon had realized what she had not: Stefan was not planning to leave this basement. He intended to desiccate.

In a sudden flash of anger, she opened her eyes and looked at him. Damon and Caroline had also dealt with Eve's voice in their heads; Elena had watched them both pressing their temples, putting the heels of their hands against their eye sockets and bearing down to try to distract from the pain. Faced with that temptation, they had resisted. Yet under the same temptation, Stefan had folded like a cheap suit. Not only had he killed but he had slaughtered. The blood trail behind him was wide, hot, and varied.

"Are you planning on facing what you've done?" She stood up as the flatness of her own voice surprised her. "Or is this your solution," she waved her hand around the dank basement, "to all of this?"

His silence was deafening.

"Fine, Stefan. You know what? Fine. All the rest of us are out here fighting for our town, but you go ahead and wallow in self-pity. Feel bad for yourself because you could not stop from killing in Eve's name, just like you couldn't stop yourself when you were with Klaus. Do whatever you're going to do. I'm not going to sit here and pretend you have no choices."

Her words sounded harsh, decisive, but she waited a few long, dragging seconds to see if he would respond. He never even shifted in his chair. She turned on her heel and walked up the stairs. As the top came into sight, she saw Damon leaning there in the door frame, fingers hooked through his belt loops. He looked as tired as she felt.

"Why are you lurking at the top of the stairs?" She asked, stopping mid-step.

He shrugged. "I love to hear the wind blow." His smirk quirked. Her anger melted into her bones, not gone but no longer accessible at the moment.

"He's not going to move."

"No." Damon was unsurprised. He stood up straighter. "But he will eventually. We'll get him back."

Elena admired the confidence and ease with which Damon loved his brother. She liked to think she loved Jeremy that same way, but it was different. Jeremy was her little brother, a responsibility and also a friend. Their friendship was that of the second layer of friends. The first layer were people like Bonnie and Caroline, best friends with whom everything is shared, and the second layer consisted of people like Matt and Tyler, friends who ran in the same circle and shared good times and bad times but not the mundane or the deep. She loved Jeremy more than she could ever love the others, but the relationship mirrored that level. Damon and Stefan often disliked one another, rarely managed civil words for more than a few hours, and often came to violence. Yet their faith and knowledge in one another ran deeper than Elena could comprehend. Perhaps its quality was not human.

"I don't know if I care," she replied, taking her turn leaning against the doorframe. The loyal wood held her up as she yawned. Startled, Damon tilted his head and searched her face. She wondered what he saw there. The softness of his searching tightened back up into flashing eyes and grins.

"Now, now, Bella. You're just overtired. In the morning, you'll be ready to do everything to you can to convince Edward he's a glittering vampire prince again."

"It's not like that." She spoke, but Damon did not listen. He reached for her and put an arm around her waist.

"Come on. You're overtired. Let me take you home."

His arm around her felt strong and able, and suddenly her feet were lead. She put her head against him. He smelled like leather, whiskey, and Ivory soap. Unconsciously, she turned her nose into the scent, pressing herself into his bicep.

"You smell good," she murmured. She breathed in again and closed her eyes. He didn't answer, but she felt him shift against her. She felt his arm at the back of her knees and then she was in his arms. He held her easily with one arm, and with the other, pulled her arms up around his neck. She draped them there, supporting her own weight without opening her eyes. She felt his moving, both forward and in place, and realized he was on the phone.

"I'm just going to keep her here tonight, Ric... Yeah, she's exhausted... He's his usual perky self... Of course I am being sarcastic... He sucks. She's upset. I'm the stable one. Life is good... Yeah, yeah. Don't let the bed bugs bite."

Elena allowed Damon to take care of her. Rather than opening her eyes, she left them closed, and it felt so good to check out of her own life for a few minutes. His tenderness juxtaposed with almost delicious lowered inhibitions. Stefan had killed. She did not owe him everything. Damon laid her down on soft sheets, pulled her shoes off her feet, and covered her with a blanket. The bed had the same smell of virility that she had breathed in on him, and she realized that either out of habit or deliberacy, he had brought her to his room, not his brother's. She felt the bed stop shifting as he finished tucking her in and heard his footsteps move toward the door.

"Damon, wait," she pushed her heavy eyelids open. "Don't leave me?"

He turned around and looked at her. His blue eyes narrowed, taking in the moment, and then widened. She felt the air around her crackle, and she wondered if he could feel it too. Exhaustion was liquor, and she was honest with its courage in her veins.

"Stay with me."

When she repeated herself, Damon covered the distance between them in two steps as if he had been waiting a lifetime for this permission. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, and she reached up to touch his face. She remembered when he had lain dying. In that moment, she had touched his pale, clammy skin and prayed for a miracle, for a cure for a werewolf bite, and she had whispered to his lips that she liked him just the way he was. She had moved first. On her porch the night they had sent Jeremy away, he had told her he wanted something real to feel guilty over. He had moved back up her front steps in a single, fluid motion, cupped her face in his hands, and then he had kissed his brother's girl. He had moved first.

It was her turn again in their dance, and she had held her feelings for him at bay, denied them, cursed them in the quiet of her bedroom. He reached for her hand and engulfed it in his.

"Do you still feel guilty?" She asked, remembering his feelings when he had kissed her last time.

He did not have to ask what she meant. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm selfish," he said without shame or pretense. He rubbed the pad of his thumb across her knuckles.

"I'm not." It was a statement of fact.

"I know."

"Sometimes I want to be," she whispered.

As if he understood, he made the move regardless of whose turn it was. Their last kiss had been fast, hungry. This time, Damon leaned in, nose brushing against hers, but did not touch her lips. Instead, he tilted his face up to brush the softest of kisses on her cheek. Elena's skin erupted into chills. He reached her eyelids next, touching each gently. When he finally lowered his mouth to hers, she leaned up into him and kissed him back. Hot lust sliced through her, and she touched him everywhere. His hands roved for only a moment before settling on her collarbones, thumbs moving in the hollows, as he drank her into him.

He slid his mouth down her neck, grazing his teeth along the skin. Dangerous flames licked their way along her nerves, and she wanted more of him. As gently as he had moved in, though, he pulled back. Their breathing was heavy, in unison, and their faces lit up in simultaneous smiles.

"Get some sleep, Scarlett. Tomorrow is another day." He leaned in to kiss her forehead and was gone before they could talk about what had just happened. Elena sat still and stared at the doorway, heart hammering against her chest.

X

Castiel awoke to the sounds of prayer and the ache of intense pain across his body. He stood up slowly, easing himself into an upright position and gingerly assessing the damage to his vessel. The nose seemed to be broken, loose cartilage shifting with each breath, and a few ribs seemed to be moving freely under the skin. As he stood, he pushed his wings out, letting his full span stretch. Relief flooded through his frame as the kinks and cramps left the long black appendages. When he had first been stationed on Earth, he had missed his wings terribly, preferring them to human motility, but the long years had changed his mind. Materializing his wings was a hassle he was glad not to deal with. In true Heaven, it was another story entirely. There, his wings were not weighed down by matter but made of light and shadow. In Heaven, they were unbreakable. Here, like a bird's, they were hollow-boned and though strong, able to be snapped.

His atoms felt loose, so he knew that Sam's sigil had worked. The molecular pieces of his being were knitting back together. When Raphael had appeared so suddenly in that cabin, the archangel had tried to reason with his fallen brother. Castiel would not have expected conversation from the other angel, but he suspected its occurrence was merely a ruse. Whatever its purpose, the exchange of words had given Sam time to draw a bloody sigil on the table behind him and blast both angels away.

Castiel had ended up somewhere nebulous in an outer reach of Heaven. It was hard to tell which one – somewhere with basic Earthly matter – and fortunately, Raphael had not ended up here. Though touching base in Heaven again was helpful, this recharge was not enough to allow Castiel to face Raphael. Not yet.

 _Castiel, we've gotten rid of the sigil. You can come back._ Sam Winchester's prayers were so different than those of his brother. Sam had a sense of humor, of course, because most of God's humans did, but he did not use it in serious situations. If Dean had been praying in this moment, he would have thrown in a nickname, a profane word, and a smirk. Without seeing Sam, Cas still knew the young Winchester was not smirking. Castiel knew that Sam and Bobby would be very afraid right now, desperate for him to show up, but he needed to take advantage of being back in Heaven. He needed to touch base with his troops.

The rebellion's headquarters were a well-guarded secret location atop a celestial mountain. To him, it looked like Mount Kilimanjaro, an Earthly treasure he had always admired, but to other angels, it had no true corporeal form. Some members of his ranks only followed him because they longed to see Earth firsthand after centuries of duty in obscure heavens. Under archangel rule, many angels would never know anything except mundane obedience. Cas remembered his own first heady taste of defiance; everyone deserved the opportunity to shape destiny, if only for themselves.

He transposed himself into the headquarters. Angels were gathered, and Castiel chose to see them in human form. He had tried to give his followers the concept of recreation, but explaining story-writing, card-playing, small talk, and other human inventions had left him frustrated. He saw that some of the angels held conversation, but some were standing or sitting in stone-like silence, merely waiting. Their patient obedience humbled him. One of the most competent angels approached him. Jael was a strong ally. Her earthly vessel – a redheaded woman in the middle of life – smiled at his approach.

"Castiel, we have been waiting for your return."

"I have been busy."

"We heard of Raphael's attack on you in the human heavens and feared for your life. Our only reason for hope was that it would have been unlike him not to announce his triumph over you, if it had happened."

"I am fine, though my help is still required on Earth. A monster from Purgatory is trying to destroy facets of Earth's creation as if she seeks to be a new God."

Jael looked nervous even as she asked the question: "Is it necessary for you to be there? Our search for Heaven's weapons is not going well without you, and Balthazar has sought you out several times."

Castiel looked around at his headquarters in Heaven, places where he belonged. A rush of hot shame flooded him as he answered, "I am needed on Earth. I still believe our calling is to be shepherds of man."

"Yes sir," Jael did not hesitate to accept his answer. Though she had heard the speeches on free will and choice many times, Castiel recognized that she only followed him because she did not wish to see humanity engulfed in Apocalypse. She did not want to make her own choices. She simply wanted to follow orders, and his orders rang true for her.

Castiel felt uncomfortable as he circulated and spoke to angels, encouraging them on their work to find the weapons and reassuring them that peace was what they all needed, not Apocalypse, not Lucifer and Michael in a cosmic skirmish. They accepted his words, trusted him, and he wanted nothing more than to leave. In a rare moment of insight, he knew he was homesick.

He did not feel at home amongst angels anymore. He wanted the laughter and fighting of the Winchester brothers, the quiet strength and grouchiness of Bobby Singer, the smiles and patience of Bonnie Bennett. Those silly humans did not seem silly when he was among them. They might only be a step above the other apes, but he enjoyed them. By the time he parted with his battalion, leaving them written orders, he was relieved to go back to a hunting cabin in the woods of Tennessee.

He arrived in the middle of the kitchen. Sam leapt out of the chair in which he had been sitting.

"Cas," he was at the angel's side instantly, hand grabbing his shoulder. "You've got to send me back."

Castiel looked at him. "I cannot do that. The amount of power it would take to do a second trip now would interfere with the safety of retrieving Dean and Caroline later."

"How do you even know they made it? And, man, we don't even know how to find Samuel Colt and the phoenix, so we need to get as many of us back there as we can get."

"It is not reasonable to expend energy on a second trip so close to when they must be retrieved." Castiel could not help his frustration at having to repeat himself.

Sam groaned and put his hands on top of his head. The snarl of emotional responses around him buzzed, and Castiel concentrated in order to begin untangling the knots. Sam was angry that Cas would not send him back, worried that Dean was in danger, scared that the phoenix might not be found, and yet there were other emotions too, ones too subtle for Cas to understand. His awareness was growing, but he still had much to learn.

Sam looked Cas dead-on. "Dean might be in trouble without me there."

Castiel frowned. "Sam." He felt the rumble of his own deep voice. "Do you think I would risk Dean?"

Castiel asked the question while memory gurgled up from his brain's deep recesses. The Winchesters could never truly understand his feelings of connection with Dean. He remembered the order from his command staff: he had to save a righteous man from Hell. At the time, the unexpected order surprised him. Humans were often involved in mix-ups with demons and deals, and occasionally, the righteous ended up in Hell through trickery. Angels did not worry about such small losses through the cosmic cracks.

Yet he obeyed the command. As others before him had done, he descended into Hell, and there he had seen Dean Winchester for the first time. The man was human then, laid bare and splayed on a rack. His skin had been filleted in ribbons, folded over itself as it hung by mere sinews off the muscle and bone. Through the broken body, Cas had seen the soul of the man, and its sight remained unparalleled for him. It was the first time Castiel, for all his work as a shepherd of humankind, had ever seen a soul. A soul was a perfect vision of God's handiwork and beauty. To have thought such an idea and turned it into creation was proof of His power.

Like Dean's body, his soul was damaged, carved like the face of old cliffs, but the dents, cracks, and schisms had been smoothed over by something, worn back into soft swirls. Dean's soul had glowed with love, a strange mixture of human and celestial, and Castiel had known then why he was The, not a, Righteous Man.

Hell served its own master, and time and location were nebulous there. As Castiel made the journey towards the man — seconds in Heaven, months in Earth, and decades in Hell — he watched Dean change. The beautiful soul took on so many cracks and fissures that it had to fill them with what was left; agony and rage were patches and putty in what remained. Castiel could not reach Dean before the man took a knife in hand himself and joined in the torture. Closing his hand on Dean's shoulder and pulling him back to Earth where he belonged had been the sweetest relief imaginable, but Castiel would never forget that he had not been fast enough. He alone knew the extent of his knowledge of Dean Winchester.

The memories surged through the angelic brain at inhuman speed, and a mere instance passed between his words, his memories, and Sam's defeated reply.

"No. You wouldn't risk Dean," Sam said. Bobby walked into the room as the young man spoke.

"Who? Cas? He's not doing anything that is going to keep him from bringing that boy home. You know that," Bobby replied.

The man opened the fridge and pulled out two beers. He extended his arm to give one to Sam, who took it. He looked at Castiel, raising his eyebrows and nodding his head slightly. Cas tilted his own head, wondering what the facial expression was intended to mean. Just as he did so, Bobby tossed the beer to him. It smashed onto the wooden floor with a tremendous crash. Cas looked down at the glassy puddle.

"The nod must have meant you were going to throw that bottle," he observed.

"Balls. I'll find a broom, dumbass." Bobby grumbled his way back out of the room.

Sam took a drink of his beer. "You know he likes you if he cusses you."

Castiel appreciated the affirmation.

X

Dean succeeded as a Western movie hero. He laid the unconscious damsel out on the ground, gathered wood, and lit a fire. Then he had no idea what to do except wait for her to wake up. He took a seat on the ground and poked at the fire with a stick, shifting the meager wood in it often enough to keep it stoked. By the firelight, Caroline looked peaceful, just a pretty blonde sleeping it off. He wondered how badly she was hurt by the time travel. Could vampires sustain internal bleeding, or was that a purely human phenomenon? Despite himself, he felt worried about her. She might be a monster, but now he knew the story of how she had become one. If someone like him had been there to save her, she could be just a girl, a silly, beautiful girl breaking hearts and getting heartbroken. He was glad he had never been privy to monster backstory before.

Caroline stirred and came to, sitting up.

"Easy there, vamp. You took it pretty hard." He poked the fire again.

"I'm okay, human. What's the plan?" She sat up now, head cradled in her hands. After a moment, she picked her head back up and shook loose her curls. She pushed her hands through the tangles two different ways. Dean realized she was actually fixing her hair. Now that was vanity.

"We need to get to town."

"I like it." Her mouth wiggled, nearly smiling. "Simple plan."

"Shut up." He said it without thinking. Then it occurred to him that it might offend her, but she looked unaffected. He had developed poor conversation skills after years with Sam where insults passed as affection and rudeness was equivalent to bonding. Dean and Caroline broke camp together, putting out the fire. Dean watched her move. She was stiff but pushing easily through it. He didn't think anyone with internal bleeding would be able to move like that, and that was good enough of a reason for him to push his concern aside. They fell into step beside each other as they started the trek to town. Less light twinkled on the horizon than earlier.

"Thank you for not setting me on fire while I was unconscious," Caroline's voice was thin and steely. There was no genuine gratitude in it. Dean tried not answering, but after a few long seconds, she pressed on. "I mean, really, it must have been hard for you to resist torching me since I am so utterly vile to you."

He sighed. There was going to be no way around this chick flick moment. He owed her an apology and an explanation. "Listen, Caroline, I'm only going to say this once."

"What?"

"I have spent my whole life hunting monsters. I was armed with a shotgun before you were born, and from the time I could, my dad taught me that if it wasn't human, it needed to die. I'm not saying he was wrong – mostly he did what he had to do to keep our family alive – but he was a black and white thinker, and I guess I was doing the same thing. You didn't choose to be a monster, and you don't deserve to be treated like one unless you act like one."

He looked straight ahead as he spoke, not wanting to watch the reaction on her face. In the little bit of time he had spent with her since ending up in Mystic Falls, he had seen that she was a creature of high emotion. Her mouth was probably spreading into a smile as he spoke, a beaming, radiant grin that thanked him for finally understanding. While he was glad to be able to make her happy, he was uncomfortable with shows of emotion that feminine.

She stopped in her tracks beside him and grabbed his arm.

"Seriously? That's the best you've got? You treat me like the dirt beneath your feet, and then you start to feel a little bit guilty about that because you eavesdrop on my sob story. So you tell me I probably don't deserve to be treated like shit. Probably. Maybe." He turned to her in absolute shock. She wasn't happy. She was angry. Her blue-green eyes flashed even in the dark.

"Are you angry right now?" He did not even know how to respond to something that ridiculous.

"Do you know why I don't treat you like shit? Because you are a person. God knows it's not because you earned it by being nice to me."

"You're not a person." The words popped out of his mouth.

"I was. If I had a choice, I still would be."

Those words were a slap in the face, and he felt a flash of guilt. Then the pool of acid in his stomach, empty and grumbling, gurgled. It was a loud, angry rumble that lasted a few seconds too long and a decibel too loud. Her eyes widened in the dark.

"Are you thinking about food in the middle of our fight?" The corner of her mouth twitched as his stomach rumbled again.

"Our fight? What are we? Newlyweds? We're not having a fight, sister. You are. I was freakin' apologizing."

"Do other people let you get away with that?"

"With what?" He realized she was still holding his arm from when she had stopped him. He shrugged his shoulder to get her to let go, but she didn't seem to notice. Damn superhuman strength. His shrug did send his sarape off-kilter, though. He straightened it out and frowned.

"With crap apologies," she said.

Dean tried to think back on the number of times he had apologized to someone, and very few came to his mind. He wasn't in a position to apologize to anyone besides Sam very often, and Sam did let him get away with crap apologies because Sam had a way of knowing his brother was sorry before Dean himself knew. Most of the time, all Dean had to do was fumble over a few words for his brother to respond, "I know, Dean. I'm sorry too." He thought about giving Caroline a smartass answer right now, but he was hungry, tired, and still quite a walk from the possibility of a bed.

"Yeah. Sam knows when I'm sorry, so he doesn't expect the damn Gettysburg Address before he'll stop bitching."

"You know what makes a really great apology?" She was still sarcastic.

"What?"

"Actually saying you're sorry."

"Alright, Caroline... What's your last name again?"

"Forbes," she jutted her chin out proudly.

"Caroline Forbes, I am sorry," he said slowly, loudly, before muttering under his breath, "Sorry that your ass ended up here with me instead of Sam."

"Vampire hearing," she retorted. They started to walk in silence again, and in the stony quiet, their footfalls were loud. After a few minutes, Caroline jutted her arm out in front of him. Hitting it felt just like running chest-first into a concrete partition.

"Son of a—" He began only to be shushed. The distinct tone of her hush chimed familiar warning. She heard something that warranted investigation. He stood still and listened. Nothing marred the quiet of the landscape, and yet Caroline leaned in close to him, so close that her lips nearly brushed his ear.

"Dean," she said so softly he could barely hear her, even at this proximity, "Did you bring vervain? Don't answer out loud."

There could be only one reason she would ask about vervain. He shook his head and cursed himself for not packing a go-bag. Getting decked out in Western gear had seemed more important at the time, but now the gun in his holster and the knives strapped on his body were inadequate. Caroline closed her fingers on his shoulder and looked straight out. Her muscles tensed like coiled steel, and she launched at something unseen before Dean could react.

She collided with someone else with the force of a tractor trailer; the impact rattled in the air. In the blurred darkness, Dean was surprised how much he could see. The other creature was also a vampire, a sinewy man, and Caroline's eyes flashed red and black as white fangs glowed in the moonlight. In the tangle, she got the upper hand on the attacker, bending him backwards. Dean squinted, trying to see what she was doing. His stomach lurched when it became clear that she was pushing her fingers through the flesh above the creature's heart, threatening to rip it out. Her face was pure predator, and her voice was a deadly hiss.

"Do you hunt alone?"

The man grunted and wiggled under her. Her fingers sank deeper, and he screeched. Dean could not look away.

"Do you hunt alone?" The repeated question cut over the sound of agony.

"No. I'm with my sire and…" Caroline cut him, pulling her bloody fingers out of his chest cavity.

"Tell your nest that someone is passing through. I want no trouble, but the human with me is not to be bothered."

Having been released, the man scampered back a few feet. Distance gave him confidence, and he sneered. "Why would we spare a human on the command of a loner? We're hungry." He actually had the audacity to look at Dean and lick his lips. Dean considered having Caroline hold the bastard still so he could go carve a wooden stake with one of his knives and then drive it through his heart.

Caroline bared her teeth; Dean realized the expression was a smile. "You tell your sire that I am passing through on orders from Klaus."

The vampire did not react. "Who?"

"Your sire will know exactly who that is, assuming he's not a newbie himself." A lull settled over them. "Now get out of here."

The other vampire raced away, blurring out of sight. Dean swallowed hard. He had never seen a conflict amongst vampires before, and its ferocity unnerved him. Caroline's almost human facade had melted away in an instant, and the way the two had circled one another had been feral, untouched by recognizable human traits. Yet now, as she turned back to look at him, her face was bashful, and his brain was kicking back into gear.

"Klaus?" He asked. "As in the guy who hosted the Mystic Falls apple shindig?"

Caroline's eyes widened. "Let's walk while we talk. I'd say the sooner we get to a town, the better."

Dean frowned, pissed with himself for not being the one to say that. He was the practical, quick-thinking big brother who urged action, but whether he liked it or not — and he didn't — he was rattled by what had just happened. He was outnumbered here in the Wild Wild West so far, and that made his skin crawl.

"So Klaus…" Caroline continued, trailing off in that awkward way that people do when they are distinctly uncomfortable. "Well, he's a vampire."

"Yeah, I knew that, but he's obviously a real bad mother of one for you to name drop him like that."

"A real bad mother," she actually giggled. "That's a funny way of putting it. I'll tell you more about it when we've made it somewhere safe."

"Alright."

"Alright? As in you're actually agreeing to something I've said?"

He shrugged. "You scared the shit out of me back there, blondie. I'm gonna be a little nicer to you until I'm back home with some crosses and garlic."

This time, she did get the smiley, warm facial expression he had been expecting earlier. In his peripheral vision, she glowed, and all sorts of unspoken gratitude fluttered in the air between them. She seemed to appreciate not being judged for her predatory display. For a moment, he wondered if she knew how silly it was for her to be grateful to him right now. If she were not here, he might have died back there. He liked to think he would have been able to handle the situation, but it was far from certain. There was no machete in his sarape, no wooden stakes tucked into his socks. Even more than that, he knew that he was no longer protected from dying. Michael's vessel was not needed unless Raphael successfully took back over the cosmos.

The walk to town dragged on, and halfway through, Dean wondered if it counted as being a little bitch if he asked the vampire to just carry him the rest of the way super-speed-style. The yips of coyotes and hoots of owls faded into more melodic birdsong, and bold strokes of orange, red, and pink wrapped across the sky. Without pollution, a sunrise sure could look pretty. Just when the blister on the back of Dean's left heel threatened to bring him down, they reached town itself. It looked just like the set of one of the movies Dean had always loved catching on TV.

"Thank God for that," he muttered. A human would not have been able to hear the comment, but Caroline tilted her head toward him and nodded.

"Yeah. I'm glad we made it too. Do we look okay?"

"You need your ego stroked, Barbie?" Dean said, not even looking back at her.

"Not my ego, but just… do we look like we'll fit in? Since we've got to try to find Samuel Colt."

Dean looked back over at her. Blood streaked her tan pants across the left thigh - a remnant from either her vomiting or her fight with the other vampire - but otherwise, she looked fine. Her embroidered button-up shirt had lost one button near the top, and he almost tilted his head down for a glance at cleavage but stuck to business instead. The girl wasn't human, after all.

"Yeah. You look fine."

"So do you except for the blanket."

"It's a sarape." He adjusted it and walked ahead of her towards the saloon. He grinned. A sign hung in front of it that honest-to-God said SALOON. He pushed open the doors to the inside. Everything was brown. Dean wasn't sure he had ever seen so much variation on that one color in his life. He felt Caroline on his heels as he walked across the empty room to the bar itself. The barkeep adjusted a pair of rimmed spectacles on his nose and still squinted.

"Can I help you, stranger?" His voice creaked like a rusty gate. His watery eyes dragged over both of them, and Dean wondered if maybe their attire was not quite so fitting after all. Even after miles of dusty walking, it was all cleaner than this fella's grimy, grey-white shirt and stained pants.

"Maybe. Name's Dean Winchester, and I'm new to town. Looking for a drink and some information," Dean deepened his voice to what felt like some good John Wayne swagger and took a seat on the barstool. He felt Caroline standing behind him, tension like a rod through her body.

"Who's the gal?"

"She's with me." Dean tried the non-answer, and it seemed to satisfy the barkeeper. "I'll have a whiskey."

"Coming right up," the barkeeper grabbed a smudged, dirty glass coated in fingerprints and started to pour the amber liquid into it.

Caroline said from behind him, "You're not going to—" but he elbowed her. This was no time to quibble over sanitation.

"The girl'll have a sarsaparilla," Dean ordered, fighting to keep a grin from appearing at the corners of his mouth. Damn if he hadn't always wanted to say something like that in real life. The West was cool. Caroline snorted behind him as the barkeeper got out another bottle and filled another dirty glass. He slid both their way, and Caroline finally softened, sitting down on the barstool beside Dean.

"So what'd you say brought you to Sunrise? You here for the wedding?" The man leaned forward, elbows first, on the bar.

Caroline piped up before Dean could decide what answer was best. "We sure are. Dean's uncle is Samuel Colt, so we figured we could see him and the wedding. He hasn't seen Samuel in a couple of years."

The barkeeper smiled, a genuine grin that only had about half the teeth it should. "Well, now, you don't say. Don't know if old Samuel will be coming into town for the wedding or not. Most people don't miss a chance for free food and drinks, but you just never know about Sam. We used to be real good friends when we were younger."

"He's not in town anymore?" Dean said.

"Lives about three miles north these days. Keeps to himself in a little cabin. Bet he'd be real glad to see some family."

"I bet." Dean took a sip of the whiskey. His tongue burned with a hot, bitter fire, and he gagged, coughing hard but trying to play it off as nothing. Caroline giggled and took a sip of her drink.

"Mine's good," she whispered, smiling.

The barkeeper squinted at them both again and then leaned in towards Dean. His nose hairs swayed with each of his breaths. "Listen here, son. I'm too old to beat around the bush."

"Okay…" Dean leaned back far enough to escape the scent of tooth decay emanating from the man's mouth.

"Are you looking to do business with her?" He jerked his thumb towards Caroline, speaking as if she weren't even there.

"Excuse me?"

"I've got a couple girls who work for me — good girls, do brisk business — and even though your girl's kind of flat-chested for what men want, she's got a real sweet smile and nice legs. If you're planning to do business with her in town, well, now I'll just have to tell you I'd like a cut. You can't just come into a man's town and cut in on his revenue like that."

Dean knew his eyes must be as big as saucers, and he risked a glance over at Caroline. Her cheeks reddened, and her eyes burned bright. Dean feared red veins would be popping out around them any second. Still, it was hard not to laugh.

"I thought this was America, free capitalist country and all?" He said slyly. Caroline sputtered an indignant grunt, drawing up to sit even straighter.

"Well, now, son, it is, it is. But you wouldn't want to hurt an old man trying to make an honest living?"

"An honest living?" Caroline echoed the words in a muted, strangled state of rage. Her disbelief quieted her tone so that it almost sounded like submission. Then she found her voice and said clearly, downright innocently, "I think you've made a mistake, sir. My husband is not here in town to start a business."

Dean should have seen the writing on the wall for that line. He quickly coughed down another gulp of whiskey. It tasted like motor oil.

"Don't worry your pretty little head over what I was saying, ma'am. The mistake was all mine," The bartender pulled his glasses from his face and wiped them with a filthy rag before putting them back on his nose. He leaned in again to Dean, getting so close this time that even with super-hearing, Caroline did not stand a chance. "In that case, you should know that I'd be happy to cut you a good price on one of my girls. Nothing spices up the conjugal bed like four tits."

Dean Winchester knew he needed to say something, but he was at a loss for words. The Wild West wasn't just cool; it was freaking badass.


	8. Chapter VIII

Klaus received a handwritten note from Elijah two days after his ball on a bright and sunshiny day. Seeing his brother's beautiful penmanship on a paper that simply said _I am with our Mother, and all is well. You should stand down_ insulted the injury of his witch being dead and his ball yielding no power plays.

Seeing his brother call the grey beast Mother, so neatly capitalized and lovingly formed, made Klaus angry. Anger served him much like two glasses of wine after dinner, galvanizing him to action while giving him a pleasant tingle. Agreements with the town of Mystic Falls aside, he would simply have to go to war. While he was not a Nazi sympathizer - Klaus was, of course, the only fascist that Klaus would support - he had a certain admiration for blitzkrieg. To throw all of one's most violent might to a cause often proved effective.

First he called his little sister to update the situation for her, expressing the importance of her not interacting with Elijah if he called and not returning to Mystic Falls at this time. She had been more than happy to comply, which irritated him a little. She should at least desire to help him deal with something of this magnitude. Instead, she was feasting on local color in SoHo.

Then Klaus began to call his Hybrids. He thought of them fondly; they were sleek, powerful bodies unlike any the world had ever seen. His creatures possessed all the strength of the vampire, all the unpredictable lethality of the werewolf, and all the sentience of man. Eve could proudly tout her bevy of creatures but few of them bore three such powerful characteristics in one form. She may have begun the creation of monsters, but Klaus had perfected it.

Today he organized from a desk in his study. With a canvas in front of him and his watercolor supplies at his side, he worked on war and art simultaneously. The efficiency mirrored that of any business executive. He was making his final hybrid call of the day.

"Tony, be a good boy and begin researching. When you come back to Mystic Falls, I would like you to bring some friends with you," Klaus explained to the speaker phone on the table as he swirled his brush in blue.

"Who should I bring, sir?" Tony's obedience practically radiated from the phone. Klaus loved it.

"New friends. I'd like to grow our ranks. I do not have the time to finish the research myself at this juncture, so you'll have to look for me. At one point, I was looking into several lycanthropic packs, one was in North Dakota and one was not too far from the Southernmost point of the Florida Everglades."

Klaus had also been looking internationally, certainly not concerned about only keeping his influence on American soil, but there was no time for that now. He continued talking as he sent a broad brush stroke up his canvas.

"I'll need you and the others to procure some of these werewolves and bring them to Mystic Falls by any means necessary."

"Thank you for trusting me to do this."

"Oh, Tony, there is no one better," Klaus could afford to be magnanimous under the warm glow of his anger. "Do not fail me."

He hung up the phone. Painting consumed his next two hours. He lifted the brush to the paper, wiggled it against the edges of his own mental image, and considered how to best choose his colors. Wolves' paws against the moon, fang marks on the sun… the vision on the canvas rose to life slowly. This painting would be historic for him someday as the art made the day he decided to end the werewolf species. It was time for all available to be hybrids.

Creation fatigued him, and he rose from his chair, stretching out his back. He walked into the kitchen. There two beautiful women relaxed. The taller brunette was stirring something on the stove, laughing and chatting with the shorter blonde. Klaus noticed appreciatively that her heavy chest threatened to spill over the top of her petite tank top whose overtasked fabric had no choice but to ride up her flat stomach. He breathed in the sweet smell of the blood pumping through their veins. He had borrowed them from a dorm at Whitmore College, though perhaps that word was inaccurate since he had no intention of returning them.

"Hi Klaus," the shorter girl purred, immediately flitting to his side and tucking herself under his arm. "Do you need us?"

"Remind me of your name, pet," he said, putting an arm around her.

"Sadie."

"Such a lovely name. What are you and Margo doing right now?"

"We're making sweet tea." Margo turned from the stove with a radiant smile.

"Good Southern girls," he said. "Listen, I'm feeling a bit… peckish after my morning of calls."

"Me please, Klaus." Margo abandoned her spoon and raced to his unoccupied side. He let his other arm fall naturally around her. His body was made for wrapping and being wrapped by women.

"No, Margo. It's my turn. It's my turn!" Sadie's petulance creased her lips adorably.

Klaus glimpsed the fear that rolled just under the layers of their compulsion; it glittered at the corners of their eyes, suppressed, unfelt by its host bodies, but not eradicated. His pulse kicked up in delicious anticipation. He lowered his lips to the crease of Sadie's neck and nipped the soft skin, fangs just extended. She flinched, a bodily physical reaction, but her smile stayed.

"It really is my turn," she said.

"Fair enough," he affirmed, removing his arm from around Margo. "Sadie's turn. You continue with your tea."

He touched Sadie's cheek, holding her steady between his hands, and put his fangs into her neck. He pulled hard, drawing the hot blood into his mouth and swallowing greedily. She was sweet, buzzing with alcohol and sugar. Against him, her body struggled, fighting for its life even though her mind was bent to his will. He felt the swell of her breasts pressing against his chest, the pull of her hands on his arms, and he curled his fingers around her blonde hair. Its softness reminded him of Caroline, and he smiled as he fed.

He took his time, taking from her neck, indulging in a sip from her wrist, returning to leave a bloody bite at her clavicle. When she passed out, limp in his arms, he weighed the pleasure of drinking her to exsanguination versus the fun of letting her remain in his home. Margo would be a lonely sight in the kitchen without her roommate. Impulse control had never been one of his gifts, though, and he turned his nose into her hair, breathed in deeply, and returned to his feast. The life left her without a sound, and when he was done, he dropped her body on the floor, wiped his mouth, and said,

"Margo, be a love, put her in your car, and go dump her body in the woods between here and Whitmore. Then bring one of your suitemates back home with you. I'd prefer the redhead to another brunette, but," he smiled a bloody smirk, "I'm not picky."

"Of course," Margo replied. He watched her awkward attempts to lift her friend's corpse. Finally, she gave up and dragged the body out by its ankles. He chuckled and headed back to his study. Refueling gave him the energy to consider his next steps. His hybrids would be his army, and in order to grow such an army, he would need Elena Gilbert. Her cooperation was unlikely, but his persuasive abilities were legendary.

The Winchesters were another issue. He had no desire to begin another assassination attempt at this time. The Salvatores, Bonnie Bennett, and even his own Caroline were clearly working with the hunters. While he was not one to consider "teamwork" as a viable option, he had to acknowledge that it made them formidable. He could not risk splitting his focus when Eve was such a very real risk. She had his brother and the desire to take over the world.

Klaus needed to make another phone call. Eve may have left town, but rumor had it that the younger Salvatore brother was still incapacitated. At the very least, Klaus had not failed to notice who had escorted the lovely Miss Gilbert to the ball. The traitorous pair had smiled and danced more than perhaps even they had realized. The gatekeeper to the doppelgänger was no longer Stefan Salvatore, if he had, in fact, ever been it.

Klaus dialed Damon Salvatore's number in his phone, pressed the speaker button, and returned to his painting.

"Hello. Better-looking brother speaking," Damon answered. Klaus could practically see the smarmy half-grin on the other vampire's face. He found Damon's false bravado and forced humor particularly grating.

"This is Klaus."

"I know. That's why I answered with my best smartass, annoying quip. I don't like you."

Klaus frowned and added a swirl of orange to his canvas. "I am in no mood for your attempts to be funny. I require doppelgänger blood."

"Now who's trying to be funny? No."

"Surely we do not have to endure this song and dance. You know I am capable of taking by force what I want, and yet I am calling. I am giving you the opportunity to simply borrow Miss Gilbert. A little brief medical procedure and she can give new life to many."

"Yeah, Red Cross, save your fundraising speech for someone who cares. You can't have Elena."

The phone clicked as Damon hung up.

Klaus flicked some yellow in the right corner and frowned. "Time for Plan B."

He needed another witch, a little leverage, and his doppelgänger to be back in business. He had faced worse odds before.

X

"Son of a bitch. An original vampire. A damn alpha. And a freaking werewolf. Hybrid monsters."

Dean leaned on the dusty dresser and tried to ignore the rhythmic thudding of sex-for-hire from the next room. Procuring a room to change had been surprisingly easy. The barkeep, Herbert, had counted the money, but luckily, the bills had been old, marked up currency he had accepted too greedily to notice mistakes like the year it entered circulation. Much to Caroline's disappointment, her faux-husband had next had to procure her a dress. In order to keep her from being mistaken for a common hooker, he had borrowed attire from one instead. The brunette from whom he had bought the dress was the one giggling and banging someone next door.

"I mean, I guess Klaus is an alpha. Mostly he's just a dick," Caroline replied. She was behind Dean, still changing, and he was dutifully looking the the other way. Her strained, distracted voice suggested a clothing struggle of some sort.

"Didn't he pick you for the first dance the other night?" Dean pointed out the obvious and earned himself a disgruntled sigh from his companion.

"He likes me." She sounded disgusted.

"What an honor," he said, kicking his heel back against the dresser. Restless energy itched under his skin. "Is there any reason I shouldn't put the dick on my hitlist?"

The rustling behind him stopped. "Dean, you can't do that. If you kill an Original, you kill every vampire in his or her lineage. You'd literally kill hundreds of possibly innocent people."

"Vampires," Dean corrected as he tried to process this staggering piece of information. 24 hours in 1861 were slipping away from them, and his mind was already on overload.

"People." Her voice was firm.

He decided this conversation was not worth it; the chances of the two of them even beginning to see eye-to-eye were slim."Are you almost dressed?"

"You can't rush perfection. Come here and help me," Caroline's bossy tone reminded Dean of Lisa, and his chest tightened; the brief familial moment hurt.

He obeyed the command and appraised the young woman. His lips curved down thoughtfully. She looked prettier in the dress than he would have expected, considering its bland cream color and occasional mysterious stains. Her arms were crossed over her chest, holding the dress up. The back flapped open, a string dangling.

She must have sensed his hesitation.

"Look, I need help, and you're all I've got," she said, lips quirking in amusement. "Just like lacing up a pair of your dirty work boots."

Dean obeyed, irritated at the disdainful reference to his usual footwear. He moved behind her and reached out. Mentally, he rearranged his thoughts: he had to think of her as a girl, not a vampire, if he was going to be able to spend the remaining hours with her. He breathed in a deep breath —one that she surely heard — and then began lacing up the string. His fingers felt fat suddenly, unsuited to the job, and he tugged harder with each pass.

"Ow. I wouldn't have told you about Klaus if I knew it was going to make you this grouchy," Caroline said.

"I'm not grouchy." He jerked on the stubborn string again. "This is just difficult. I'm not used to lacing up women's clothing."

"Oh," Caroline snorted. "Much more used to taking it off, I assume?"

He could not stifle a grin. Not even her obvious sarcasm could sour a comment like that for him.

"Actually, I have pretty good luck with that," he replied. Talking about sex in the presence of a woman made his hands fumble once more on the string. His fingers brushed against her skin, and she jolted. Sexual tension flitted between them, a moth drawn to white paper for lack of true light.

Dean knew he was not actually attracted to her. No matter how lovely the pale skin disappearing into the gown, no matter how oddly like fruit her hair smelled, and no matter how sassy the side comments she threw… he would never lose the image of her vein-streaked eyes and those wicked fangs. Vampires were not human. He hoped she didn't mistake the natural, biological surge in the air around them as anything more than that.

Dean should not have worried. Caroline laughed. "I'm sure you do. You're gorgeous."

"What?" He had the self-composure not to fumble this time and pushed the end of the string through the last hole.

"Oh stop. Don't even pretend you don't know you're attractive. You and Sam… you're like cover models." Caroline stepped away from him and moved towards the mirror, reaching shamelessly down the front of her dress to pull her breasts up into place.

She continued while shaking her head and fluffing up her curls. "Don't give me that shocked look. I was seventeen when I died, hardly a virgin. It's not really 1861, you know."

He held his hands up in front of him appeasingly.

"No judgment. I love hot co-eds. I just like mine with less teeth." He paused, reconsidering that statement and remembering some great sexcapades involving nibbling. "Or should I say, with less sharp teeth."

"You're gross."

"So sue me," he said, "Are you ready? We've got a wedding to attend, Miz Winchester."

"I'm not going anywhere where people think I'm married to you until you take off that stupid blanket."

Dean glared at her. How many times was he going to have to tell people it was a fairly-authentic-looking sarape? Yet he ran his mind over the handful of people they had encountered so far. No one had been wearing Mexican-inspired attire. He pulled it over his head reluctantly and tossed it on the bed. Then he reached for his Stetson, which was resting on the edge of the dresser. He slapped the dust off on his thigh.

"You can't have my hat," he said. "A girl wearing a hooker's dress has no right to judge."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Tex," she replied. "Let's go."

They moved out of the room and down the stairs. Dean's mind fell into steady pace with his feet. To think that he had recently been in the same room with an Alpha-Original-Hybrid staggered him. He should have killed the bastard, ended whole lines of vampires. At the end of the day, the loss of a few somewhat kindhearted vampires in Mystic Falls, Virginia paled in comparison to the eradication of hundreds of monsters. After all, since arriving in town, Dean had often heard about Stefan, a benevolent bunny-hunter, and he had seen the torn remains of a child at that creature's hands. They were all savage underneath.

The thought felt traitorous when he spared a glance at Caroline, obliviously strolling beside him and looking as human as could be in this new, otherworldly setting. As if she sensed that he was thinking about her in some capacity, she turned to him and smiled, a genuine glow of a grin.

"Think we can do this?" She phrased it as a question but that smile made it a boast.

"Find Samuel Colt? Gank a phoenix? Be rescued from 1861 by our friends in the present who may or may not have been killed by…" He caught himself before he said something about angels.

Caroline cocked an eyebrow at him.

"By whatever the hell showed up when Cas was sending us back here," he said, "Sure, we can do this."

"Good. I'm sick of hearing that bitch in my head," Caroline said.

Now outside of the saloon, Dean could see that the town had turned out in the open space since they had been inside working on a room and presentable female attire. The wedding itself seemed to have already happened — if the people milling around drinking were any indication. Though Dean supposed it was possible that people drank heavily pre-wedding in the West. He had seen a few movies that suggested many people did that in the present too. He wouldn't know; he had never been to a wedding.

The town square had tables dragged out into it, a few wooden chairs, and there was food out in heaps. Dean noticed glumly that, like everything else around here, it all seemed to be variants of tan and brown. For a wedding in a tiny Western town, the turnout seemed heavy. It might be harder to find Samuel Colt than he had anticipated.

After a few seconds of scanning the crowd, Dean spotted the bride and groom. He saw no signs of rotten teeth in the bride's unbelievably youthful mouth as she turned to her groom, a grisly-looking man who looked to be in his thirties.

"If she's going to be a child bride, she might as well get to wear a prettier dress than that," Caroline remarked, apparently having also spotted the couple. The comment drew Dean's attention to the plain blue everyday dress the girl wore.

"She's probably… what? 14? 15?" Dean tilted his head to one side. The bride looked up at her new husband and slid her thin arm around his waist.

"Yeah. Probably," Caroline nodded as she spoke. "I'd guess 14."

Suddenly Herbert, that jolly local saloon owner and pimp, moved to the front of the crowd and let out a hearty bellow for attention. The mumbling faded out; he commanded attention in the way that only the local plier of alcohol and sex could.

"Folks, there's a lot of food and a lot of drink here, thanks to Mr. Elias Finch wanting to marry his new bride in style. He's even had my place rented out, and Skip will be on the piano while my best gals will be behind the bar and keeping your sides warm. It's a rare night when we hard-working souls can forget our troubles like this!"

Herbert winked at the crowd in his best master of ceremonies impression. Dean had to admire the man's style.

"So raise your glass to the happy couple!"

People lifted glasses, some with genuine smiles and some with annoyance that their drinking was being interrupted. Not having a glass, Dean took the moment to look at Caroline. He angled his body towards hers to speak, quiet but not whispering:

"The drinking and dancing are about to start. Perfect time to start looking for Samuel Colt."

"Yeah. We'll split up to look," she agreed.

"Think that's a good idea?" Dean looked around and did not see many women - with the exception of Herbert's girls - who were unaccompanied.

Caroline chuckled and touched his arm, saying nothing. Confused, he looked back down at her, and she bared her teeth, showing the slightest hint of white fangs.

"I'll be alright." She sounded amused.

Dean nodded, touched her arm back affirmatively, and then started walking towards the table with the booze.

For just a moment there, he had forgotten she wasn't human. He needed to get this phoenix ash, stuff the Mother of All back in Purgatory, and get the hell out of Mystic Falls before he went soft.

X

Rain pelted down, and the air zinged a brisk 41 degrees. The temperature felt especially chilling when the damp was inescapable. Elijah Mikaelson drew his peacoat tighter around his body, missing the warm Virginia autumn. Denver air bit hard. His Mother had brought the rain with her when she came. She preferred the rain after her many years of weatherlessness in Purgatory.

Days ago, Mother had found him taking a walk to clear his head. Back then he had mistakenly thought she was an enemy, someone to be feared. When she took his hands, she corrected the misunderstanding. She was his past and his future. She had come home to give the whole world back to her children. No longer would they ever have to hide or feel the pangs of hunger. Her plan was perfect peace and bliss for all whom she loved. Her love could sustain them all forever.

Elijah had shown her so much of the human world since then. Mother had not known how automobiles, cell phones, or hospitals worked, and she had been charmed by these hallmarks of civilization. Right now she was replenishing her own bloody hungers at the local hospital while he gladly ran this errand for her. Mother said that Klaus was an aberration who must be stopped. Though Elijah had always loved his younger brother, he did not find this reality hard to believe. Niklaus had no vision of anything except bloodshed and domination. How could he bend to the perfect happiness Mother wished to create?

Elijah replayed her sweet words in his head: "He is not truly your brother. He is not my child, and he wishes harm on me. We must stop him before he destroys us."

Mother's plan showed her brilliance and adaptability. After asking many probing questions about human structures, familial bonds, and Klaus's hybrids, she had found the weaknesses she sought.

Elijah focused his gaze again on the field in front of him. The football players practiced in spite of the weather, cleats slipping and sliding on the muddy footing. A hard-nosed coach blasted profanity at them, sending them faster and harder. Elijah admired the war-like pageantry, remembering his time as a warrior, but then reminded himself that Mother's peace would have allure beyond any battle. On the field, he recognized #21 as Jeremy Gilbert, Elena's younger brother. He seemed to be playing some sort of defensive position.

Elijah began walking towards the practice. It was nearly the end of its scheduled time; the players would be dispersing at any moment. He moved easily on the wet grass in spite of his dress shoes, but his breathing felt a little labored as he tried to refrain from feeding. The eternal powerful hunger in his stomach must be denied for now; Mother had said so. He had to use greater subtlety in collecting Jeremy Gilbert.

As he neared the coach, he earned himself a disdainful look. Elijah had seen this overt masculinity before. The coach must be the kind of man who only respected testosterone in gym clothes and bad haircuts. Elijah had enjoyed feasting on such narrow-minded creatures even before Mother had opened his eyes. Instead, he approached the man and layered his voice with silky compulsion.

"Hello. I'm here to pick up Jeremy Gilbert. Could you call him over for me? My name is Elijah."

The coach nodded. "Yes." He turned towards the field, and when he shouted at his players, his voice did not betray that he was under another's control. "Hey Gilbert. Get over here!"

Jeremy's head popped up from his space in the huddle, and he jogged over. His strides were loose and long, beginning to lose that clumsy kid gait. Elijah wondered briefly how different life would be if humans contained actual physical strength. Instead their strength was merely an illusion. Jeremy's muscles and his athletic step meant nothing. Elijah could end him with one finger.

"Yeah, Coach?" Jeremy pulled his helmet off as he got close.

"Elijah is here to pick you up."

Jeremy seemed to notice Elijah standing there for the first time, and for a moment, he grew wide-eyed. Recognition lit his face. Elijah smiled. Jeremy's reaction made it clear that he had not put in the effort to find vervain here in Denver.

"Hello, Mr. Gilbert," he said.

Jeremy looked at his coach and forced a grimace that was meant to be a smile. Elijah supposed the child hoped to protect his coach from having his throat ripped out by hiding the gravity of this moment. Human attempts at safety enchanted Elijah.

"Thanks for letting me know I was needed, Coach. Great practice," Jeremy said. Only a supernatural being would have felt the fearful tremor under the calm words.

"Don't leave early next time, son." The coach strode off towards the other players, and Elijah put his arm around Jeremy's shoulder. To an onlooker, the gesture may have seemed casual and friendly, an uncle greeting a nephew. Only Elijah and Jeremy would know that the thin arm tightened to sinewy steel. Its mere presence removed escape from the young Gilbert's options list.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Jeremy jerked as if to step away, even though both men knew it was impossible.

"Mystic Falls has become a very interesting place since your departure. We have need of your sister." Elijah guided Jeremy up the hill where he had been watching earlier and towards the black car parked by the sidewalk. The compelled driver waited patiently in the idling vehicle.

"Get in," Elijah's voice made the command sound like a gracious request. Jeremy obeyed. Elijah could hear the sound of the boy's heart hammering in his chest. He got in as well and pulled the door of the backseat shut behind him.

"So Klaus needs Elena," Jeremy said. "You've come a long way to be a lackey for your brother."

Elijah shook his head. "Not Niklaus. No. Your sister is required for something much more important than his whims. I will explain shortly. Sit still and enjoy this short car ride."

He needed the silence in order to push himself not to feed on the child. Spending days completely sublimating himself to his base instincts had sharpened them. Hunger poked along his insides and crawled across his skin. Even the scent of blood under human tissue made his mouth water. He waited patiently, imagining how he would ask his lovely Mother for permission to feed on Jeremy.

His thoughts turned to his Mother. Her beautiful voice hummed through his brain even now, looping through his grey matter and bringing him joy. He tried to focus on this, but Klaus stubbornly pushed his way to the forefront. Looking at Elena Gilbert's younger brother reminded him of his own. Klaus raged one minute and charmed the next, but he loved his family more than he could bring himself to hate them. Elijah had never acted against him in 500 years until these recent years. He wished Mother would make peace with Klaus.

When his patience could take no more, he glanced at the digital clock at the front of the vehicle. He had been bating his temptation for Jeremy's delicious blood for only two minutes. His watch confirmed this reality.

Mother would surely understand if he could not resist a bite.

"You are not afraid," Elijah compelled as he turned to look at Jeremy. "Be still."

He reached for the boy's wrist and lifted it to his lips. An almost erotic rush surged through him as he extended his fangs and slid into the skin. He moved slowly, relishing in that singular moment where he pierced the vein wall and received the first burst of blood. All the centuries of immortality and he had never enjoyed the taste as much as he had these last few days.

He took his time to fully savor the experience. Mother would be so pleased to see her boy enjoying life's little pleasures.

X

Darkness fell fast, blanketing Sunrise, Wyoming within minutes.

After two glasses of the hardest whiskey ever devised, Dean Winchester found himself unconcerned with the growing darkness. He watched the groom.

Elias had spent some of the last hour with his bride, but he had spent more of it standing alone. On a day intended to be his own festivity - and at a party which he had bankrolled - he did not seem to be enjoying himself. Dean's curiosity got the better of him, and he finally approached. Maybe Elias would know if Samuel Colt had attended.

"Congratulations," Dean said to the man as he reached him. He lifted his hat to scratch a pesky itch just under the brim. He had no idea how Bobby could stand wearing a hat every waking minute. The front of his head itched, and the back sweated.

Elias turned to look at him. His dark eyes narrowed, and Dean felt the appraisal there. An uncomfortable wisdom glittered in that gaze, and all of Dean's hunter instincts kicked up in a flurry. His stomach clenched. Something about this man was off.

"Thank you." Elias responded with a full stop, but Dean pretended not to notice this attempt to close off conversation.

"Sure was nice of you to pay for all this." Dean lifted his glass to demonstrate and then snuck a sip. Once he'd had enough of it, the whiskey had started to taste downright delicious.

Elias grunted noncommittally.

Seeing that the conversation was going to go nowhere without direct questions, Dean considered another approach. Elias sipped from a glass of whiskey and looked around the square again. Dean noticed a scar along his left cheek; it had that shiny, welted look of an old burn.

"Your new wife is pretty," Dean heard his words slip out before he could come up with something better to say. He could practically feel Sam, who was not even there, gaping at him in disbelief that he could not come up with something more intelligent to say. Born with interpersonal skills, Sam was better suited for moments like this.

Elias did turn to look at him now, narrowing his already squinted eyes even further. Then after a long few seconds — in which he probably tried to decide if Dean had some sort of mental condition — he replied, "She's a sweet girl. Are you married?"

Lisa's radiant smile floated into Dean's mind first, and his brain replied: No, I'm not married. Then he remembered that was the wrong answer for his current persona. Here in the 1860s, he was married to Caroline.

"Yes indeed," Dean hoped his voice sounded confident, comfortable with the idea of matrimony.

"That's my wife over there," he added, waving vaguely in the direction of the food tables. He scanned in earnest, though, to confirm that Caroline was still over there. He spotted her standing talking with several older women. Whatever she was discussing had her looking pleased. He noticed impartially that unlike Elias Finch's wife, whom he had just complimented, Caroline really was the prettiest woman in the town. Modern hygiene worked wonders.

"The blonde right there?" Elias replied, his tone measured.

"Yeah. That's Caroline."

Elias grunted again. "She's young too, though not as young as Sarah. You seem older."

"You and I are probably about the same age," Dean agreed. He extended his hand. "I'm Dean Winchester."

"Elias Finch," Elias took the proffered paw and shook heartily. Dean noticed the smoothness of the other man's skin; he would have thought a cowboy like this would have leather-tough hands. Maybe the advantages of wealth kept him from the plow.

"Why did you marry yours?" Elias looked at him. The question surprised Dean. He would have assumed no one would bat an eye at marrying teenagers in the backwards West, but this man seemed to be asking a genuine question. Weren't marriages back now supposed to be all about practicality and breeding and such? Dean scrambled for an answer, cursing each "um" that slipped out in the process.

"Um, well, she's smart… interesting… tough…" He fumbled through some adjectives before turning the subject on its creator. "What about you?"

Elias smiled now, the expression unfurling from one corner of his mouth to the other. Dean was reminded of Batman's awkward grimace from the comics. Elias Finch did not seem to be the sort of man who smiled with any frequency.

"Sarah's father beat her. Everyone here in town knew it, but either didn't care or couldn't help. He was more than happy to let her go to someone who had no interest in a dowry." His flat voice belied his own generosity.

Dean took a sip of whiskey to hide his own admiration. Hell, in spite of himself, he was impressed. Earlier, he had immediately gone to the worst reasons when he had seen such a youthful bride, and to hear the real reason spoken so plainly warmed him. Traitorously, his mind went to his own youth when someone had stepped in for him.

His father had never struck him; John Winchester was too focused for outbursts of rage. His father's cold silences, his palpable disappointment, his drunken snores from the other bed… those had all been bearable. It had been Dad's unwavering pure love for Sam that had left Dean on the verge of tears too many times as a young boy. Said enough times, _Take care of Sammy_ started to sound like _You're not as important as Sammy_. But Bobby had stepped in whenever he could. Bobby had done more than make Sam's grilled cheese sandwiches and remind him to brush his teeth. He had made Dean's sandwiches too — always remembering that he liked them a little burned — and told him to scrub his teeth to avoid cavities. Dean knew his father's actions had been ones of love, but Bobby's kind words had been desperately needed as well.

"It's a good thing to help a kid in trouble," Dean finally said. Elias nodded.

"Your wife is coming over," he observed. Dean noticed that Caroline was winding her way through the crowds of people, a whiskey glass of her own in hand, and her eyes on him. A man, staggering drunkenly, bumped into her, and she didn't even budge. The weight of a man outweighing her by 150 pounds didn't even knock her off-stride. Dean winced and hoped no one noticed how odd that was. How had this girl managed to hide her differences from humanity in a small town? Like Castiel at the harvest ball, she radiated inhumanity.

As she approached, she smiled at him, and he noticed a flush in her cheeks and an extra glow in her eyes. Perhaps the whiskey had been too good to her. She slipped to him and tucked herself against his side. Her fingers grasped his shirt, curling around the fabric to steady herself. The intimacy of the gesture knocked him off-kilter. Instinctively, he put his arm around her, and just as quickly was surprised that his instincts had not made him curl away in disgust.

"Mr. Finch, this is my wife, Caroline. Caroline, this is Elias Finch," Dean said.

Caroline extended her hand brazenly for a handshake, typical 21st Century woman behavior, and Elias looked at her with one lifted eyebrow. He then turned his look to Dean, a sort of bemused surprise on his face. Dean shrugged.

Yet when Elias closed his hand around Caroline's, he stiffened. His face changed from gruff but congenial to pure steel. Rather than releasing her hand, he closed his tighter around it and reached for his waistband. He jerked her out Dean's arms in a clean snap. Dean fumbled for his own gun, but Elias's other hand shot out, closing around his. The vise-like grip held Dean still. The strength penetrated his skin so that it seemed to be holding his very bones in place. Pain burned and stung across his skin.

"Vampire," Elias made the word profane, though his voice was deadly quiet. Caroline's eyes widened as she tried to pull away.

"No! You don't understand." She jerked backwards but could not get away. "Let me go."

"Don't deny it," Elias said to her, then turned to Dean. "I know you must think I'm crazy. Your wife is a monster."

Dean struggled around his trapped hand, his other trying to get a hold of Caroline again.

"Whoa, whoa. Slow down." He held up his free hand in peace. "I know what she is. She doesn't hurt people. I swear she doesn't hurt people."

Dean barely got the words out before Elias pulled out his pistol, spun it in his hand, and whipped it across Dean's temple. Unconsciousness overtook Dean before he hit the ground.

 _Cas shook him. "Dean, get up. Sam needs you to make his coffee. You have to take care of Sammy!" Dean frowned. That wasn't right. Cas never told him to take care of Sam. The voice morphed into Lisa's. "Dean, honey, wake up. You're taking Ben to school today." That wasn't right either. Lisa was gone. Finally, the voice changed to an unfamiliar man's. "Get up, son. You took quite a knock on the head."_

Dean responded to that voice and pushed his eyes open slowly. Complete black greeted him. A nose swirled into focus first, complete with tufts of grey and black nose hair. He reached up groggily to push it away, only to feel the sting of his hand being slapped.

"No need to touch people's faces, boy. Come to and stand up."

Dean could see the speaker clearly now. His craggy face matched his stone-grey hair, but his facial expression matched John Winchester. This man took no shit from no son of a bitch. Dean obeyed his orders, wobbling a bit as he stood up. The man did not reach out to steady him. Reality crashed back in on Dean. Elias Finch had taken Caroline; not only had he known what she was, but he had been strong enough to overpower her. Any situation where that was true seemed a little much for a mere mortal to handle alone.

"Go to wherever you're staying. I'll bring your wife back," the man said as if reading minds. Dean shook his head, hand on his temple where a nasty welt had swelled.

"No. I have to go after her."

"Listen, I get it. A man's got to do what a man's got to do, but you don't know what you're facing here. Finch is no ordinary man." Something in the man's tone made it clear just who he was.

"You're Samuel Colt," Dean breathed out the statement. As silly as it was, relief flooded through his aching body. Like a child who has just spotted a safe adult in a crowd, he let out a breath he had not known he was holding.

"As charged. Who are you?"

"I'm Dean Winchester, and I've been looking for you. I'm…" Dean tried to figure out if there was any reasonable way to tell someone you're from another time period. He had done it before — more than once actually — and it had never gone well. "I heard you might know something about phoenixes."

Samuel jerked his head backwards, face twisting. "Phoenixes. You're crazy."

"You know, phoenixes. Birds reborn from the ashes. They're a little harder to find than demons, ghosts, vampires, all that jazz."

"You took a pretty hard hit to the head, kid."

Dean's bubbling frustration tipped over. "Colt, you're a hunter. You hunt things that hide in kids' closets and make them scream for their mommies. I'm a hunter too, so when I tell you that phoenixes are real, don't give me the whole civilian-nutball speech."

Samuel stared at him for a long moment, looked him up and down twice, and then nodded.

"Alright. Fine. I ain't never seen a phoenix. Now let's go get your wife."

"On that subject, I've got some things to tell you about her," Dean said. "I'll talk while we walk."

"We're just walking to the edge of town to the corral for some horses." Samuel Colt responded before setting out in stride.

Dean began to relay the pieces of information that seemed necessary. He told Samuel about needing phoenix ash for a spell to stop a creature escaped from Purgatory first and then tripped into the part about having come from the future to fetch it. At first, Samuel looked concerned and confused. By the time Dean explained about having Colt's journal, Samuel seemed to have settled into the new idea.

"You're taking this well," Dean observed. They reached the corral, a haphazard fence made of at least three kinds of wood. The horses inside grazed listlessly on scraggly pieces of grass. Dean's closest experience with horses involved memories of helping Bobby fix up Mustangs. Up close, the beasts smelled bad and loomed larger than he would have guessed. He gulped down his nerves, reminding himself that he had always wanted to be a cowboy.

"When you've been doing this as long as I have, a bow-legged kid from the future needing some phoenix isn't that much of a shock." Samuel unlatched the gate and stepped inside the corral. He lifted a saddle off the fence, clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and watched a large reddish-colored horse approach him. "Do you know how to ride?"

"I don't even know how to saddle one of these things up to ride," Dean admitted. Samuel grumbled in irritation, saddling first his own horse and then saddling a multi-colored black and white one as well. He took two bridles off the fence, and Dean made a face as he watched Samuel slip his fingers into the horses' mouths to encourage them to take the bit.

"Hunters learn quick," Samuel observed. "Now mount up."

Dean obediently put himself by the horse's side. He patted its shoulder. "Easy there, bucko."

Samuel grabbed the front of the saddle and fluidly got on the horse, gathering the reins in his hand. A man of action, he touched his heels against the horse's sides and trotted off.

"Shit." Dean put his foot in the stirrup, grabbed the front of the saddle, and pulled. His body lifted off the ground, hovered along the edge of the saddle, but when he tried to swing the back leg over, it refused to go. He slid off in a slow motion like the air letting out of a balloon. "That was anticlimactic."

The stirrup wobbled back in forth defiantly. Samuel's horse's hoofbeats faded to almost nothing.

"Son of a bitch," Dean cursed as if new profanity would get him on the horse faster. This time he grabbed tight hold of the saddle horn, put his foot in the stirrup, and jumped. His whole body hung suspended in the air for a few seconds, but his traitorously-tight pants would not bend. He hit the ground again with a resounding thud. To the horse's credit, it did not budge

"Don't you want to lay down, horsey? Easy access that way."

The horse did not respond, so Dean tried one more time, letting out a colossal karate-style grunt and flinging himself upwards. His right leg cleared onto the other side with a resounding ripping sound. He felt the cool breeze between his legs for a moment before his butt connected with the saddle.

"Motherfucker."

Startled by the sound and the impact, the horse started cantering off in the direction of its companion, Dean clinging to the saddle horn and trying to find the reins.

His horse spotted Samuel's and caught up, slowing down to fall into stride. Samuel waited a few seconds for Dean to gather the reins and get his seat. Just when the pain in his butt and legs started to subside and his balance found equilibrium, Dean heard Samuel say triumphantly,

"Good. You've got it now. Let's go!" He and his horse shot forward. Dean's followed.

All of the galloping Dean had watched in Westerns was for naught. In real life, the hoofbeats seemed to echo up from the horse's feet through his whole body. He felt like Jell-O wobbling with every reverberation. His teeth even clattered together with the strides.

"Where are we going?" Dean forced the words out, sounding for all the world like a drunken sailor.

"Elias Finch's place is just outside of town. We'll be there in just a minute."

"Don't we need gear?" The exertion to get the words out over the hoofbeats felt like screaming. As soon as he asked the question, he remembered that Samuel Colt had the Colt and naturally, feared no creature, supernatural or otherwise.

Fear, which had been trickling from his brain to the rest of his body, finally filled enough of him that he could no longer ignore it. Elias Finch, whatever he was, whoever he was, could have killed Caroline. He imagined returning to Mystic Falls empty-handed without her. His brother and Cas would feign believing him, but he knew the questions they would ask behind his back: Could he have helped her? Did he do everything he could? Did his hatred of her affect his performance?

They could not have known how much it would all change over 24 hours, that right now he was as scared for her as he would have been for Elena. Caroline herself, with those smirks and smiles and snarks, charmed him enough that he could almost see past the fangs, and he wanted her to be okay. It was as simple as that.

Ahead, a cabin glowed with the dim burn of the lantern inside. Dean thought a useless, habitual prayer: _Let her be okay. You've got to be able to bring her home, Cas._ He knew these absent prayers were the reason Cas could find him anywhere he went, and in spite of his grumbling, he didn't mind that at all.

"Slow up," Samuel tugged his reins and pulled his horse to a stop. "These horses won't go anywhere. Dismount here."

Dean forced his right leg to swing back the way it had come only a few short minutes before, ignoring the protesting tug in the muscles and the further ripping of the fabric. His boots hit the ground, and it seemed to sway under him.

"Gotta get my land legs back," he muttered under his breath, steadying himself with the horse's side. Samuel looked irritated. He pulled the gun out of his holster. Its familiar silver gleamed even in the darkness, and Dean remembered the last time he had held it at Lucifer's temple. His faith in God had meant nothing, but he had placed the fate of the world on his faith in this gun. And he had been wrong.

"Let's go." Samuel held the gun in front of him. They walked toward the house, their footfalls disguised by the surprisingly loud purr of nature. An owl hooted plaintively.

"I'll open the door. You step in and shoot anything that moves that's not my wife," Dean said. When they reached the door, Dean flattened his palm against the wood and then crawled his hand to the doorknob. With a practiced twist, he jerked the knob open and threw his shoulder against the door. It slammed open as Samuel jumped through, gun extended.

Dress ripped from shoulder to navel, Caroline knelt beside a shelf in the kitchen. The lantern glowing on the floor stood in a smoldering pile of ashes.

Upon hearing the door, she stood up, an empty mug in her hand. The mix of bloody Xena: Warrior Princess and domestic housewife shocked him more than any other part of the sight in front of him.

"Hey Dean," she said, a shy smile on her lips, "I found the phoenix."

"Is the mug for the ashes?" He heard his own stupid response before he even processed her words.

"Yeah."

He crossed the floor of the cabin, past shocked Samuel Colt, and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her into an embrace. Hot relief bubbled through his limbs. She hugged him back, hard, and breathed into his shoulder.

"I thought I was going to die," she muttered against the fabric of his shirt. "But then I realized I'm a freaking vampire and killed him."

"You're a badass." He spoke this piece of praise into her hair. "Fill that thing up with ashes and let's get home."

Her laugh vibrations rattled his chest, and a soft place in his stomach clenched tight.


	9. Chapter IX

Dean had been gone for 23 hours, 54 minutes, and 38 seconds, and Castiel worried when timelines ran this close. He twiddled his thumbs, a long-standing human practice for waiting, but it offered him little comfort. Sam had wanted to pull Dean and Caroline back early – better safe than sorry, he said – but Bobby insisted on sticking to the plan.

"What if they're back there concocting some harebrained scheme, thinking they have time, and you just pop them back to now?" Bobby had said.

Castiel respected the point and had been waiting it out, choosing to take his seconds very quickly. Angels could both slow and speed time for themselves; he could extend his moments, feeling every nanosecond and acting within them, and he could also shrink them, taking them in with as little individual attention as one might pay to each drop in a gulp of whiskey. Incapable of doing this, Sam had been researching, drinking two pots of coffee, and pacing. He had not slept in well over 24 hours. Even from two rooms away, Castiel could hear the pulse of the nerves in the man's head, beating out the vibrations of a headache.

Now Sam had finally taken a seat across from Castiel, amd he looked at him intently. His elbows were propped on the table, his plaid shirtsleeves cuffed up above the bony joints even though it was chilly inside the cabin tonight. Castiel wanted to ask why.

"I've got a question, Cas," Sam said, his tone solemn.

"You know I will answer it if I can," Cas replied. He turned his body towards the table and consequently towards Sam.

Sam licked his lips and touched one palm to the other, fingers clasping and then unclasping. He released his hands and laid them out flat on the table.

"You pulled me out of Hell."

Castiel sensed a question in the statement, so he answered in the affirmative. "Yes."

"We've talked about how my soul got left behind and about Lucifer." Sam's shoulders tightened imperceptibly at Lucifer's name. "But I wanted to ask. Did you see Michael in the Cage too?"

Castiel nodded. "Yes. Michael was also trapped."

"Did you have the juice to save him too?"

"Michael is an archangel, the type of being the Cage is intended to hold. Getting him out would be as difficult as removing Lucifer. I do not have, as you say, the juice."

Sam looked over at the couch where Bobby was sitting, flipping through an old book written in German. Sam did not seem to want Bobby to be able to hear the conversation. Cas altered the vibration pitch of their voices to run on a frequency Bobby could not hear. He did not bother to tell Sam he had done so because explanations of phenomena beyond human understanding became exhausting and tedious very quickly.

"I was wondering... Is Adam still trapped in the Cage with them?" Sam blurted the words out all at once before turning his gaze away.

"No. When I threw holy oil at Michael, his vessel was damaged irreparably."

"Yeah, I know that," Sam hesitated. "Or rather, I know you think that. But what if you're wrong? Like you were wrong about bringing me back topside. You thought you had all of me and then you didn't."

Castiel heard the undercurrent of anger in Sam's voice. Dean would have been angry, raising his voice, accusing, but Sam chose gentle words that belied his feelings. Sam had so many negative feelings so much of the time that he fought very hard to suppress them. It was the difference between being the Righteous Man and being the chosen Prince of Darkness. Even cleansed of demon blood, Sam still fought against a nature he had never wanted to have.

"I am not wrong."

"So he's dead? All the way? In Heaven or Hell based on his merits?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Castiel was surprised Sam did not ask which direction Adam had gone. He stood up, conversation over and the timeframe now ticking 23 hours, 58 minutes, and 12 seconds. He adjusted the vibrations of their voices back to normal.

"I am going to bring back Dean and Caroline now. Please stand back."

Sam obeyed, putting several large steps between himself and Castiel. Bobby also stood up from his spot on the couch. Without moving his corporeal form, Castiel reached into the time stream, sifting through the threads. The strands of chronology glowed in his perception, taking on shades of what humans saw as blue. He located the one he needed and traced its length back to the specific day in 1861. Once his energies were focused on the right moment, he pulled the continuum open and reached inside for Dean and Caroline. He focused on their names in Enochian; a name in Enochian was not a moniker but a Name, a calling unique to existence.

He was relieved to feel them both. Their roots in the time period had grown strong over the last 24 hours, and he channeled all the powers of Heaven still at his disposal to pull them out. For a moment, his strength faltered and he nearly lost hold of them in the 1980s, but he managed to continue bringing them up the strand. Only seconds had passed in the present, and yet by the time he wrenched open the modern continuum to bring them through, Castiel was exhausted.

Dean and Caroline materialized in front of them, dirty and tattered and even bloody but undeniably alive. To the naked human eye, it looked as though they had effortlessly appeared. Castiel dropped back into his chair and coughed, feeling the burn of so much force in his vessel's lungs.

"Jesus, Cas. A little warning would have been nice," Dean groused, but the corner of his mouth kicked up as he said it. Caroline turned to him and gave a little smile. Her hands were wrapped tightly around a brown mug. Castiel felt the swirling of emotions in the room: relief, curiosity, concern, and fear.

Sam crossed to Dean in two strides, arms out. Ever the big brother, Dean pulled Sam down to his level, and the taller man stooped so that his chin rested against Dean's shoulder. Every time they hugged, they reenacted this protective sincerity from their childhood without even realizing it. Castiel admired the love it conveyed. Some of the worry in the room moved and connected with him, and he saw that Dean was approaching him now. He reached down to clap his hand on Cas's shoulder, eyes warm.

"You okay, man?" Dean tightened his fingers. "I thought Raphael was going to smite your sorry ass."

"My ass has nothing to apologize for," Cas replied, tilting his head to look over at Sam. Sam offered no guidance, just a half-smile.

"Right, right. I'm just glad you're not dead." Dean patted Cas's shoulder again and then uncharacteristically ruffled his hair. Castiel felt the gesture through his scalp, surprised at the shock it caused across his nerves and then surprised that he had not known human scalps were sensitive. The mysteries of the universe were infinite.

Caroline had set the mug on the table beside him and was now talking to Bobby. "Yeah. Phoenixes are people. I mean, not really, of course... I mean, not human. But he was a person. A person who really hated vampires."

"Maybe the two species used to have a rivalry," Bobby said. For an old redneck, he had an admirable interest in the academic side of every issue.

Castiel stretched out his arm to pick up the mug on the table beside him. He looked at the ashes. Caroline reached over and took the it out of his hand.

"Hey, hey. Don't shake those around. I had to kill for those," she said, frowning at him.

"He wouldn't mess anything up," Dean said. Castiel felt his mouth curve at the corners, an involuntary smile.

"Look, I'm going to go change," Dean continued. "Then we can all figure out what our next step is. Cas, call Bonnie would you? We're going to need witchy shit."

Dean turned, gave Bobby a look that was meaningless to Castiel but caused the older man to follow Dean, and they both exited the room.

"Of course." Castiel considered traveling to Bonnie and speaking with her in person, testing the magical barrier around Mystic Falls, but the tiredness weighing on his limbs warned him against it. He reached into the pocket of his coat for his cell phone. He stuck his thumb in the crease and flipped it open, finding the buttons for Bonnie's phone number easily. She had suggested that he put it in his contacts, but he thought that was an unnecessary complication. Remembering 10 digits paled into comparison to carrying logistics for full scale Heavenly war, but he was entirely capable of doing both.

The phone rang three times and then she picked up. "Hello?"

"Hello Bonnie. This is Castiel."

"I know. I have your number saved." Her brightness was evident even in her voice. "Did it work? We've been worried not having heard from y'all."

"The plan did not go... according to plan." His fumble made Sam chuckle. "However, we have what we need now."

"Is everyone okay?"

"Yes. Everyone has survived."

She breathed in sharply. "For now."

Her grimness startled him. "I perceive something is wrong in Mystic Falls."

"Like there hasn't been something wrong for a long time?"

"Something new is upsetting you," he said, taking a new tack on the statement.

"The rain's stopped, and everything has been quiet. When something like this is happening, quiet is not good."

"That may be true."

"Just... I don't know, Cas. Get back here as soon as you can. I'll feel safer knowing the phoenix ashes are in witch hands."

"Okay." He responded. A long silence drew itself out, and then he heard a weak chuckle on the other end. "Am I supposed to say something else?"

"No." She was smiling again; he could tell. "I'll talk to you later. Be safe."

"Goodbye, Bonnie."

He hung up the phone. Sam's fingers tapped away on his laptop, back to reading everything he could find on phoenix ashes and their use in magic. The internet did not have much information on ancient topics such as that, but Castiel knew that the familiar activity comforted Sam. Castiel remembered his own days of routine. When he had first been stationed on Earth 2,000 years ago, he had often greeted the sunrise across the globe, following it on its arc. He had checked on his Father's work each step of the way, and he recognized in himself an angel who had fallen in love with creation. Blasphemously, he thought that he would have made a good God, not abandoning his children the way God himself had.

Then he remembered that an angelic army waited for him in Heaven, and yet he was here with the Winchesters. His flaws suddenly loomed large.

An acrid smell suddenly reached his nostrils, too faint for human detection, and Castiel turned in its direction before the mug on the table exploded into living flames. The ball of fire burned its way up, glowing in the air. It pulsed with life.

"Holy shit." Sam scrambled backwards away from the table. Castiel stood up himself and ignored the ache through his vessel's limbs, trying to pull the power of his grace back from its tiny reserves. Like an uncharged phone, his battery flashed him an internal "low power warning."

The flames grew to human size. Summoned by the commotion, Dean, Bobby, and Caroline tripped into the room in various states of disarray. Bobby with an unlit cigarette still in his fingers, Dean still buttoning up his flannel shirt, and Caroline with her belt halfway through the loops of her jeans. Castiel admired their spirit – all of them rushing towards danger rather than away from it.

The pulsing flames formed features, melding from top to bottom into the shape of a man. Then slowly, they began to burn out, fire being replaced by flesh in a transformation that was equal parts stunning and grotesque. In place of the now-broken ceramic mug, a man stood on the table, wearing a leather duster and a cowboy hat to rival Dean's. Castiel felt a surprising reverence. It had been centuries since he had seen a phoenix.

"You've screwed up now." The humanoid creature spoke in a graveled tone, looking straight at Caroline. He advanced; his skin still burned like coals low in a fire.

Dean shot a protective hand out to pull Caroline behind him. It was a ridiculous notion – a human protecting a vampire from a phoenix – but the hardness in his eyes sold its viability. Castiel thought the theatrics were a bit melodramatic. A phoenix could not threaten them in the presence of an angel, for even a depleted celestial being was made of stardust and god-touched particles. He stepped in now.

Castiel lifted his hand and put it on the phoenixes shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. The creature pushed forward against him impotently.

"I understand you are confused and angry. You must calm down."

"Like hell I will," the phoenix growled. He ducked to go under Castiel's reach, drawing a knife out of his waistband. He slashed out violently. The knife opened a slash in Castiel's trenchcoat and his arm. He frowned and regained his grip on the creature. The phoenix looked at the wounded arm holding him tight in disbelief.

"What the hell are you?"

Behind him, Castiel could hear Dean asking Caroline quietly, "How did you kill it last time?" and could hear her heated whisper, "Does it matter? If he won't stay dead, my method obviously isn't right!" Sam was extending his arms holding a gun, useless in this moment, and Bobby had the common sense to realize that he could do nothing.

Castiel knew Dean wished for him to keep his identity secret. Some moments, however, call for a change of plans. He called up the repository of information lurking inside the creature. His name was Elias Finch; in 1861, he had been just over 500 years old, and he had seen a human girl in peril. The capacity for love showed promise.

"I am an Angel of the Lord, Elias Finch, and we need your help."

He had seen the facial expression now on Elias's face before: when he had revealed himself to Dean Winchester in a barn years ago.

Castiel would never stop being amazed by the lack of faith the toughest of men bore.

X

"They've got the ashes, 'lena," Bonnie whispered as she slipped into the seat behind Elena. In another lifetime, the girls might have been in Calculus this senior year, but amidst the terror and change of the last several years, their academics had fallen away to nothing. They filled seats in a study hall instead, having already taken the required four years of mathematics from 8th to 11th grades. To be fair, if you could fail study hall, they would have been failing that as well. Neither of them had bothered to show up to school in over a week.

Elena breathed in a sigh of relief, nodded her thanks to Bonnie for the news, and returned to her packet of Government make-up work. Mrs. Kurtz did not brighten her interior classroom with even the soft lighting of a lamp; instead, the elderly woman seemed content to bake herself and all of her students in the flourescent, instiutional glow from the overhead lights. Elena wondered if prison felt like this. Concentrating on checks and balances seemed so silly, but Alaric had insisted that she darken the doorway of the high school today.

"You've got to remember there's a world out there, Elena. You're human. You're not even a hunter. Someday..." Alaric had gotten borderline choked up before being able to continue. "Someday I hope you'll look back at all of this like a bad dream. No vampires, no witches, nothing except normal."

While she doubted his vision for her future, she had gotten up this morning, showered, and gone through the suprisingly difficult task of getting dressed. What said "Everything is okay" when your friends were suffering and maybe even dying around you? What said "Don't notice me" when you glanced nervously at the clock every few minutes to see if 24 hours in 1861 were over yet?

She noticed she had written the word phoenix on her paper in place of filibuster and rubbed her eraser over the mistake. After all, if the Senate was dealing with phoenixes, they would not have had to travel in time to locate one.

The clock on the wall clicked ferociously, announcing another hour had passed. 3:00 p.m. The bell would ring in five minutes. She began to gather her materials, slipping her papers back into the three-ring binder and snapping it shut. Other students around her did the same.

"Yo, Ms. Kurtz, can I call my mom to come pick me up?" A voice suddenly came in jovially from the doorway. One of the sophomores from the football team stood there. Elena's stomach dropped as she realized he was soaking wet. "I was walking out to get my bag out of the gym, and it started raining again. No way Coach is going to have practice in this weather, but you know we're not allowed to have cell phones in the building."

Elena turned to look at Bonnie. Her eyes were also wide.

"Of course you can make a phone call, Harrison. Everyone else should begin packing up. Don't walk out the door until the bell rings." Mrs. Kurtz spoke from her desk without looking up. She seemed to be playing solitaire on her phone.

When the bell rang, Elena and Bonnie moved side by side in a silent fog. They dutifully went to their lockers, deposited their binders, grabbed their backpacks, and started out the side door for the student parking lot. As soon as they pushed open the red metal door to the outside, their fears were confirmed.

Rain poured from the sky in sheets, in blankets. The end-is-nigh weather was back with a vengenance.

"What time are they getting back to town?" Elena asked Bonnie, trying to keep her sudden pessismism from her voice.

"Cas didn't say when we talked, but I'd guess they'll be hitting the road soon. I'll call Caroline when I get over to Mrs. Cubbins. We're still working," Bonnie dropped her voice so that the throngs of students exiting around them would not hear, "on the a spell to pinpoint Eve's location. It should be ready by the time the phoenix ashes are back in Mystic Falls. Are you heading over to the Salvatores?"

The memory of Damon's hot kiss against her skin surfaced, pushing to be allowed into the forefront. _I can't think about that now. I just can't._ She shook head head to clear the thought.

"No. I'll go home and change into my rain boots and then call to see what's going on with Stefan. If Damon isn't there and the voices have started again..." She trailed off, not wanting to actually say aloud that the younger Salvatore might hurt her.

"Yeah," Bonnie said. "Listen, be safe until we all meet back up again? I've got a bad feeling."

"We've all had bad feelings for so long that I don't remember good feelings," Elena replied wryly. Her traitorous brain sent her the memory of the sensation of her heartbeat when Damon had kissed her.

"You're right." Bonnie took a step closer and wrapped Elena in a hug. Her thin arms squeezed tightly. She whispered in Elena's ear, "Just be careful around Stefan please. He'd never mean to hurt you."

They parted, and Elena drove home without cutting on the radio. The only sound was the pounding of the rain and the steady thumping of her windshield wipers. The driveway was empty when she pulled in; Alaric would still be at school, struggling to keep a job to pay the bills while still solving supernatural issues. She ducked out of the car and raced into the house and moved upstairs to her room to change. Damp and shivering, she stripped down and switched from normal September-in-Virginia weather to a sweater and jeans. Pictures on the wall of her room still made her sad, winking, smiling reminders of when she had had family and hobbies.

She picked up her phone to call Stefan when she heard a resounding knock on the door.

"Coming!" She called from upstairs, taking the steps down two-at-a-time. She peered through the peekhole and gasped. Elijah Mikaelson stood in perfect relaxation on her stoop, completely dry in spite of the weather in which he must have arrived. Denying him entry would be impossible; when Jenna was alive, she had innocently invited him in as Elijah Smith, an enthusiastic historical author. Yet her nervous response could be entirely unreasonable as he had none of his brother's volatility. She opened the door in spite of her own reservations.

"Hello Miss Gilbert," Elijah greeted. "I have a message for you from my Mother."

Smooth as silk, his voice should not have been able to make her insides turn to ice, but that was precisely what it did. His Mother. Eve had her hold on him. That knowledge erased all of her faith in his gentlemanly facade.

"What interest does your mother have with me?" Her voice quivered.

"That is none of your business. Your business is to come to the old Lockwood estate, so that she may speak with you."

"Speak with me?"

"Yes." Elijah did not elaborate.

"Why would you come and ask like this? I'd think she would just... take whatever it is she wants."

"Mother is here to bring us all peace and harmony, Elena. She is perfect and just."

"Just the same, I'd prefer not to... meet her just yet." Elena fumbled over the words, mind trying to formulate a plan. If she could schedule a time and a place for the meeting... if the Winchesters and company could get back from Tennessee quickly enough... if Bonnie and Mrs. Cubbins could figure out the proper way to use the phoenix ashes... then this unexpected twist of connection could work to their advantage.

Elijah took two steps, moving past her and stepping inside. The psychological effect served its purpose: a chilling reminder that he was invited into the Gilbert home. He stepped over to the stairwell and ran a finger along it, inspecting the dust he collected.

"A pity you've allowed such a stately old Southern home to be in such a state of disarray," Elijah frowned. "But no matter, I do not think you will desire to put off meeting with Mother. She has your brother."

Elena stiffened. Her horror barely formed a word as it fell from her lips. "What?"

"We made a trip to Denver to collect Jeremy. Mother has quickly learned that humans respond well to leverage." Elijah smiled benevolently. "She really is quite brilliant to have caught up on so much in such a short time."

Elena did not respond to his glowing endorsements of his mother. "What do I have to do to make certain Jeremy is safe?"

"As I said, you should see yourself to the cellar of the old Lockwood estate."

"You're not... taking me?"

"No. I am feeling quite... peckish. I need to have a meal before returning myself. You have a car, after all, and do not need to be carried. I must warn you, though, Miss Gilbert. You should not try any tricks. You should come alone, or you will be sacrificing your brother on the altar of an inevitably-failed attempt to stop Mother." He wiped his dusty finger on the foyer table's runner. "Do we have an agreement?"

She nodded. "I'll be there," she said hollowly. "Elijah, please... don't let her hurt him. He's all I have left."

Elijah looked at her for a long moment, and in his eyes, she thought she saw a flash of humanity, a touch of compassion. Then he was gone.

Fear had lurked as her constant companion so long that she had ceased to notice its presence, but now it lurched to its feet and loomed large over her. Her lungs tightened in her chest, and she thought of Jeremy. In her mind, he was not the six-foot muscled, capable teenager, but the little kid who had followed her around in their childhood. His almost-blonde mop had only come up to her chest then, and she used to get so mad at him for sneaking into her room to read her diary.

"He wants to be near you, honey," Mom had always said. Mom, with her gentle hands and soothing voice. Mom had always made them hug it out after a fight, and Jeremy had hated that part. Gumbling and grousing, he had always pouted until she tickled him and made him laugh. She had never stopped hearing that little boy's laugh every time he chuckled, no matter how burly his voice was getting these days.

She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, trying to push back the panic threatening to break through. The muscles in her face fought with her, and she squeezed her eyes shut to keep in the salty tears. She had to do whatever it took to save Jeremy, even if that meant going to Eve alone.

With shaking hands, she pulled on her rainboots, zipped up her slicker, and grabbed her car keys. Normally it took fifteen minutes to get to the old Lockwood plantation; she planned to make it in half that.

X

Damon answered the phone as soon as he saw Elena's name on the Caller ID. After a morning of reading, drinking, and watching Stefan do nothing, he had spent the afternoon reading, drinking, and watching Stefan do nothing. The temptation to get in his car and drive anywhere but here nipped at his heels every second. What did he owe the world? Since when was he responsible for stopping some ancient evil? He was a good-time guy, not a hero, and if his brother had thrown in the towel, it was downright weird for him not to do the same. Yet he stayed. He was no hero, but he was a man who could not resist the pull of a woman. Love had been his human weakness but more so, the weakness of his afterlife. He walked out of Stefan's dank dungeon lair to answer.

"I was wondering when I'd hear from you," he said as he stepped up the stairs into the living room. He took a few steps towards the window, surprised to see that the rain was back. "Lovely weather."

"Damon." Her voice was urgent. "Eve has Jeremy."

"What?"

"She has Jeremy. Elijah came to the house, and he says I have to go see her alone or she'll hurt Jeremy." Elena spit out her words in a mad rush, and Damon could hear the whirr of her vehicle's engine rumbling under her voice.

"Calm down, Elena. We'll figure this out. Don't go anywhere else. Come straight to my house. Where are you supposed to meet her?"

He heard her hesitate. "Damon, no. I can't risk anything happening to Jeremy."

"Elena, listen to me." He felt panic rising up through his body, sneaking from his nerves to his brain instead of the other way around. "Don't go anywhere. We don't even know why she'd want you, but if Elijah's involved, it has to do with Klaus. Let's make a plan."

"I just wanted to let you know what was going on, but I have to go alone. I can't let you stop me from saving Jeremy."

"I'm not trying to stop you. I'm trying to help you." He lied through his teeth, knowing full-well that he'd watch Jeremy die a thousand deaths before he would lose Elena. Unfortunately, he knew that Elena knew that too. He could hear it in the scared, shaky sigh she exhaled.

"We don't know that she plans to kill me. If that was the plan, she would have just had Elijah do it when he came to get me."

"We know nothing good is going to come out of this," he said, agitated. "Turn your over-eager ass around, Kamikaze Kate, and we can fix this."

"You'd never choose him over me, and right now, I can't think of anything more important I could do. Bye, Damon. I'll call you later."

She hung up, and even though her fearful, nervous voice did not say goodbye with any finality, he feared what her decision would mean. He looked down at the phone in his hand and felt the fear tap the wellspring of rage inside him. With a snarl of frustration, he threw his phone across the room. It hit the wall and smashed into pieces. Satisfied with the sound of smashing, he threw the decanter of bourbon from the table across the room and watched the glass and liquid explode.

Then he turned on his heel and marched back down the dungeon stairs.

"Stefan, get your sorry ass up." The lack of joking and snark in his voice made it sound like a stranger's. Stefan came into view, sallow and slumped in that stupid wooden chair, and Damon's rage flew higher. "Elena's in trouble, and I need your help."

Stefan neither blinked nor turned his head. He showed no signs of hearing his brother.

Damon crossed the room to him and gripped him by both shoulders, digging his fingers in so hard that he felt Stefan's fabric, flesh, and then muscle give way. Stefan grunted in pain but did not look up. Damon pulled his fingers out and grabbed his brother's face this time. His bloody fingers left prints on the fair skin.

"I know you've got yourself all amped up for a guilt trip and that you want a century or two to sit and stew over how you're not perfect like you always want to be, but I have a newsflash for you: no one gives a damn that you're not Super-Stefan. You want to cry over spilled blood? Do it after you've helped clean up the mess," Damon saw a drop of his spit land on Stefan's cheek. "Right now? Elena is driving to meet Eve to save her little brother, and I have no idea how to save her. I don't even know where she's going. What I do know is that I need you to get up, juice up, and help me unless you've got an incredible excuse not to."

Stefan's cloudy eyes finally closed. "I can't hear her right now."

Damon's shoulders dropped half an inch in relief. "Yeah, I know, and I know that could change at any second. But we'll tune her out, brother. We've got to figure out how to get to Elena."

"Okay." Stefan reached up to steady himself against Damon's shoulder, trying to stand up. "I need blood."

"It's gotta be human. That's all I've got on tap." Damon enjoyed hearing his own sarcastic humor again; it stemmed the flow of fear in his veins.

"Okay."

"Is that your new favorite word or something? Give me your phone. I've got a call to make while you raid the fridge"

Stefan obediently, if slowly, handed Damon his phone, and Damon marched back up the stairs. He scrolled through the contacts until he found Klaus's name. The phone rang until it reached voicemail. He hung up and dialed again. Voicemail again. He dialed again, and this time on the third ring, he got an answer.

"Has no one ever told you how incredibly rude it is to call repeatedly?" Klaus's annoyance was palpabable.

"Your big brother is running around doing Mummy's bidding, so I wasn't exactly checking Dear Abby for the politest way to get your attention," Damon replied, voice hiding how frantic he felt. As he spoke, he closed his hands around a satchel and began to search for items to put into it. A wooden stake in the top drawer, a sealed vial of vervain tucked under the coffee table... suddenly all the little protective cosies around the house had immediate purpose.

"Elijah was there?" Klaus's voice became a hiss.

"Yes and no. He's managed to convince my girlfriend to meet with the Psycho Bitch in order to save her brother. So as you can see, we have family problems all around." Damon flipped the satchel shut and moved over to stick his head down the cellar steps. "C'mon, Stefan, we don't have time for you to gel your 'do."

"I'm sorry, Damon, but who exactly is your girlfriend?" Even in a moment of potential crisis, Klaus found sarcasm irresistable. Realizing his own mistake actually took Damon a moment. Elena was not his girlfriend, the love of his life, perhaps, but not his girlfriend.

"Shut up. Listen. What matters is that Eve is in town, and we need to find her to stop her from hurting Elena. Now."

Stefan walked up the stairs now. His hollow eyes closed as he sucked the last drops from a blood bag.

"I'll meet you at Elena's house. Eve will not kill my doppelganger."

As Klaus hung up the phone, Damon could not even salvage anger at the possessive reference to Elena as a human blood bag.

"Let's go," he said. Stefan nodded.

"It'll be faster to go on foot," Stefan said. With human blood flowing through his system, he would have strength in spades.

Many days, the Salvatores had taken cars because animal blood clogged the younger brother. Today would not be one of those days. Many days, the Salvatores' relationship teetered on the edge of friendship and enmity, requiring deconstruction by the moment. Today would not be one of those days. Today they moved with one purpose in a familiar situation.

They were going to save the woman they loved.

They broke into a run, unheeding of the rain or wind, two apex predators on a mission.

X

Sam's habit of watching Dean used to get him in trouble. When he was a kid, he used to drive his brother crazy, sitting on the ugly ripped linoleum floor and just watching him. Dean would roll up his shirt sleeves and start using the microwave on the motel counter with all the flourish of a chef. Looking back, Sam recognized that those shirt sleeves had always been rolled up because the shirts were Dad's and that the meals that had impressed him so were box macaroni cheese and ham sandwiches on soggy white bread. But at the time, he had thought Dean walked on water.

Moments like this made him realize he had never fully lost the habit.

Castiel had calmed the phoenix – a man named Elias Finch – down physically, but Dean stepped in next. Sam watched him get everyone to take a seat and cool off, even adding a chuckle at his own joke. A few side comments, proferred beer all around, and a _Harry Potter_ reference cracked open Elias's reserves. Dean put Caroline on his right side where he could keep a hand protectively close in case the phoenix tried anything and put Sam on his left. Sam watched it happen with a touch of that same child-like awe. He would always be a little brother whose big brother had the world figured out. He had spared a glance over at Castiel then to see an expression not so very different on the angel's face. Cas would always be an angel who stood in awe of humanity through the lens of one human man.

Sam listened as the phoenix explained 500-odd years of life, describing events and phenomenons that only Castiel seemed to understand, and then shared the story of how he ended up in 1861. Sam wanted to ask him a million questions about his species, so underrepresented in the lore, but sensed it was neither the place nor time.

"I've never tried to live among humans before now, but I saw Sarah – that's my... wife," Elias rolled the word awkwardly on his tongue, unfamiliar with the taste of it. "She was at the river washing clothes with a black eye and swollen limp, bruises up and down her arms, and crying. You know I'd been alive for centuries and I'd never seen a human cry? I'd never gotten that close before. You remember the first time you saw a human cry?"

He directed the question to Castiel, dark eyes knowing. Cas stared at him for those three beats too long that he always did, and then his mouth tilted from straight to angled for just a moment, a fleeting smile.

"I do."

"Then you remember," Elias smiled himself now, not a true smile but a nodded acknowledgement of something big. "I don't know anything 'bout angels. Didn't even know you existed until a few minutes ago. But for me, I'd been alone so long, but I'd never realized humans were actually sentient until I saw this little girl crying. I could see her loneliness the same way I saw mine, and I just wanted to help her. So I moved into Sunrise, and little by little, I figured out how to live among people."

He looked to Cas again. He seemed to sense understanding in Cas that the others could not provide.

"I work and eat food, and I was able to get Sarah out of her father's house. I'd have been able to do it sooner, but I've been fighting vampires." Elias turned his dark eyes to Caroline. Dean shifted beside her, hand twitching protectively at his side. She jutted her chin out.

"Maybe you should have been concentrating on helping that abused girl rather than killing other women," she said. A toss of her head sent a spray of her blonde curls flying, even as messy and greasy as they were. Sam noticed she avoided Castiel's gaze entirely since he had announced his species. From a place of academic curiosity, he wanted to ask why.

Elias coughed low in his throat, embarrassed. "If you'll pardon me saying so, I've never been one to think of vampires as men or women. You aren't human."

"I was." An eyebrow raise accompanied her arch reply.

"Your people were hunting in the town. I was just trying to protect humans."

Dean turned his head, looking up in a moment of realization, and then touched Caroline's knee. "That vamp you scared off on the edge of town must have been one of them. You and Elias were fighting on the same team and didn't even know it."

"He kidnapped me and tried to kill me," Caroline said petulantly.

"You tried to kill me too," Elias pointed out the obvious.

"I had a good reason!"

"So did I."

Sam watched the back and forth, head following the volleyed words like a tennis match, when Bobby cleared his throat. He leaned forward in his chair, pushed his hat back to scratch his head, and then pulled it into position again.

"Trust me, cupcake." He had his eye on Caroline as he spoke. "No one is more interested in your interpersonal crap than I am."

Dean laughed, ever appreciative of good sarcasm.

"But we've got real problems to solve. Instead of having a Hallmark conversation about humanity, someone ought to tell Mr. Finch here exactly why we traveled back to 1861 to kill him," Bobby said.

"Bobby's right." Dean nodded. He began to explain, taking a surprisingly serious tone for himself. He outlined the threat of Eve and Purgatory and Hell on Earth with a soft sell, and Elias listened, rubbing his thumb along his lower lip thoughtfully. Sam jumped in once to clarify the power she had over monsters, taking away their free will, but he wondered if it was right to expect this creature to care about a problem in a time that was not even his own.

"So basically, we need a little of your fairy dust to make us fly," Dean concluded, holding his hands wide in front of him and grinning. "What do you say?"

"Is now really the time for _Peter Pan_?" Caroline asked with an eyeroll that proved she was a teenager. Sam noticed a smile twitching on the corners of her mouth, though, and wondered if Dean realized he had won himself a fan.

"Unless Peter Pan is able to help us obtain phoenix ashes, I agree with her. We need to focus," Castiel added. Sternness etched itself on his features, and Dean chuckled to himself without explaining.

Elias ignored their banter but spoke up when they finished. "Stopping the Mother of All Monsters just requires a little phoenix ash, eh?"

"Not that we necessarily want you to die for it..." Caroline's voice was small.

On that front, Sam felt conflicted. Wanting anyone to die for a cause felt wrong; he remembered the long weeks of agony as he and Dean shared the burden of that decision about the Apocalypse. If he had learned anything from those two stubborn brothers struggling to die for one another, it was that self-sacrifice did not come easy. The only thing harder was sacrificing the people you loved. Images of Jess, Ellen, and Jo floated across his mind. Somewhere in 1861, Sarah now-Finch might miss the newfound companionship and safety Elias represented.

Here and now, though, they needed to stop Eve no matter what it cost. Sam knew if he were still soulless he could have done the deed for them. He would have figured out a way to kill Finch while the creature was talking and then he would have handled it without batting an eye. Reckless, ruthless efficiency had its place. He watched everyone watch Elias Finch and look for words to say.

Finch lifted his beer to his lips and took a long draw. He wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve. If holding every eye in the room made him uncomfortable, he didn't show it. Finally he held out his right hand, fingers splayed and palm up.

"Okay, so this isn't exactly an answer," Dean muttered to no one in particular as Elias Finch stared at his own hand.

Elias curled his fingers in towards the palm. As they curled, they burned away from tip to base, changing from inflamed digits into a pile of ash that rested in the palm of the hand. The naked fingerless hand created a stark image.

"You've got to be freakin' shitting me," Dean said. Sam stifled a smile.

"We regenerate from our ashes," Elias explained. He took the last sip of his beer with his left hand and then tilted the ashes into the empty bottle. "It'll take a little while, but my hand will regrow. Use the ashes for your quest. Beat the Mother of All and seal up Purgatory or whatever it is you're trying to do. Just send me home."

Sam accepted the bottle of ashes, and a little ray of hope blossomed out inside of him.

Elias Finch had given them what they needed, and yet he was going to be back home in time for dinner with his wife. Maybe there were ways to win without self-sacrifice.

X

"Do not approach her unless ordered. Do not break rank. Do not disobey me."

Klaus heard the echo of his own orders in his head as his feet carried him toward the Gilbert house. To move faster than rain was no trouble for a short distance, but thundering across town was another matter. The sheets of precipitation soaked through his clothes and made vision – which was superfulous realy – nearly impossible. Dozens of hybrid feet thudded the ground behind him, drumming out a marching cadence. If he had not been preoccupied, he would have enjoyed the melody. His thoughts were on Elijah instead.

How could his brother be working for something so evil? Of all the Mikaelsons, Elijah alone kept both his humanity and his supreme power. Klaus had felt the absolute inhumanity of Eve. She might be the Mother of All Monsters, but for creatures such as vampires, that was a half-story at best. Klaus denied his humanity as often as he could, but at his core, he knew it was what made them superior to other monsters just as their monsterhood made them superior to the humans. Subjugating oneself to a creature of lesser matter such as Eve seemed so unlike Elijah, and Klaus feared what that meant for her power. In spite of bringin an army, he would have to tread carefully. He did not want a victory that did not end with his brother alive.

Pragmatically, he also needed Elena for her life-giving capabilities. Did he not have werewolves chained in his house this very moment waiting to be turned into hybrids?

He turned the corner of the neighborhood, unheeding of what humans might see the supernatural army amassing outside the Gilbert house. The walkway showed its owner's lack of regard for her lawn; weeds grew through the stones, and the grass needed to be mowed. Her sloppiness did not impress.

On the porch, he saw the two Salvatore brothers. Her had seen them at one another's throats, hands in each other's blood, necks snapped, but at the moment, they stood shoulder to shoulder. Damon stood one step in front of Stefan, almost imperceptible, while Stefan stood closer than normal, the front of his shoulder actually touching the back of Damon's. Klaus recognized in it the old cliché of the older brother shielding the younger. In his family, he liked to think the younger brother stood as greatest of them all – that he stood behind no one. But as he looked at their stark, strained faces, he wondered what it would be like to allow someone to stand before you, ready to absorb the blows yet to come.

"She's gone," Damon said in way of a greeting. Every person knew that Elena was the only person in Damon's life who could be represented with a single pronoun.

"And Eve is back." Stefan touched his temple unconsciously as he spoke.

Klaus almost growled. If she wanted war, he would bring her war. If Mommy didn't want to share power, she could die. He was Niklaus Mikaelson, for God's sake.

"Then we kill her."


	10. Chapter X

Tying up loose ends and starting on the trip back to Mystic Falls happened faster than Dean had expected. Cas had returned the phoenix to his own time and slumped back into his chair. Exhaustion dented the creases around his eyes. Dean didn't have time to worry about Cas now, so he tabled that concern for later. He loaded everybody up, bit by bit, and as he talked with Bobby and Sam, he noticed Caroline approach Cas herself.

He wished he had the same damn super-hearing as the two of them; he wanted to know what they were saying. Whatever it was, Caroline had her bounce back in her step when they parted. They left a few minutes later. Cas and Caroline folded into the backseat, and Bobby hugged Sam goodbye. Dean had turned to him next.

"You left your cowboy hat in there," Bobby observed, tilting his head back toward the cabin.

"Yeah." Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "Back to reality now. Ridding the world of another unspeakable evil. You know the drill."

Bobby nodded. "I do. You sure you don't need me to come with you?"

Dean considered it. Having Bobby there always made him feel safer, or rather, it had when he was younger. Now too much stood between him and the boy who had believed Bobby Singer and John Winchester knew everything. He shook his head.

"No. We'll call if we need anything."

"Call even if you don't." Bobby hugged him, and Dean leaned into it. Bobby gave his cheek a fatherly pat before sending him away.

After that, they had driven away, and Dean had been surprised at his own happiness. Watching Cas send Elias back to 1861, sealing the phoenix ashes in a jar, driving back to a pair of witches cooking up a plan… it felt like putting W's on the board. Sam felt the same way, too. Dean had only suspected his brother's happiness until he cut on the radio at the Virginia state line. After aggressively vetoing Asia's 'Heat of the Moment,' Sam had started digging through the cassette tapes.

"We've heard all of these a thousand times," Sam grumbled. If there was one thing about Sam that Dean knew, it was that he only grumbled when he was in a good mood. When shit fell apart, Sam was the first one to go Susie Sunshine and take it in stride. When he was in a good mood, he could be Sammy the little brat, five years old again and grumpy over nothing.

"We've got to get some new tunes. I mean, this kid back there doesn't even know what these are," Sam continued, holding up a tape.

"Hey, I do so," Caroline said. "I have a Bangles tape that I love."

"The Bangles do not count." Dean shook his head. In the rearview mirror, he saw her smile.

"They count!" She looked at Sam for confirmation, but he shook his head.

"Nope. No dice." He turned around and handed her back the bin of tapes. "You can pick something from here that you know, though. We'll teach Cas the words."

The corner of Dean's mouth kicked up at the grin he heard in his brother's voice.

Caroline dug through the bin, and Dean watched the road pass by. He could have taken the interstate this time, but old habits die hard. All his years of driving he had been taking other routes, following the curves of the land rather than the roads that sliced right through it. He could go faster on the roads with less cops anyway.

"Put this one in!" Caroline handed them a Journey tape. Dean was tempted to tell her no, that this was some of the weakest music in his collection, but her hopeful face glowed in the rearview mirror.

"Sure thing, vamp." He popped the tape in and cut up the volume. 'Any Way You Want It' started blasting through the speakers. Caroline should have been shy - she was the newcomer out of the four of them - but instead she started belting out the tune with all the enthusiasm of a drunken karaoke singer. She swung her head side to side, waves flying, and threw her arms out dramatically. Her voice cracked a couple times she sang at such volume. The two non-drivers stared at her.

She leaned forward during an instrumental stretch, putting her hands on either side of the head rest and leaning close. "Come on, Dean!"

"Nah. I'm waiting for Cas to jump in."

Cas looked up at the rearview mirror in surprise, meeting Dean's gaze, and opened his mouth to say he didn't know the words. Dean winked at him, and Cas, realizing the joke, nodded. That shy half-smile flipped at the corner of the angel's mouth. Dean expected that to be the end of it.

The chorus started up again, and Caroline opened her mouth and redoubled her singing. Then Castiel, Angel of the Lord, joined in. His voice formed a surprisingly true baritone in spite of its otherworldly gravel, and his quick mind had the words down pat even after only hearing it once before.

Dean ignored the warm happiness that flooded through him at hearing Cas cut loose, but when Sam joined in with an enthusiastic howl, Dean lost control of the warmth. It spread up from his chest and became a grin. Dean hadn't heard Sam let go like that since he had gotten him back, and Dean drummed his fingers on the wheel and just listened.

"You're the king of bad road trip singing. What gives?" Sam asked as the song ended.

"Yes, Dean. What gives?" Cas repeated Sam. "You said you would sing if I did."

Dean had no desire to tell them that the god-awful chorus of their three voices in his Impala was so beautiful he didn't want to miss it. Instead he punched the rewind button, listening to the whiny scratch of the tape backing up, and like a pro, hit play again. The first blast of the song started again. He cut the radio up louder. This time no one sang the first note louder than Dean.

They belted it out together. Caroline played air guitar on her seatbelt strap, Castiel did not move with the music at all until she grabbed his hand and made him dance, and Sam watched the spectacle in the backseat with sideways glances at Dean that clearly said _Are you seeing this?!_

Dean almost missed the sound of a phone ringing.

Caroline didn't though, and she scooped it up as he cut the music down. He had no idea how he knew the happy moment was over, but he felt the joy leave the car like air hissing out of a balloon. Caroline's face fell, her voice tightened, and she spoke in terse replies to whoever she was talking to.

"We're on our way." She hung up without saying goodbye.

Dean, Sam, and Cas waited for her to turn her attention to them. When she did speak, her voice shook.

"Eve is back in Mystic Falls, and she has Elena."

Dean thought of that dark-eyed teenager whose mouth already had frown lines from years of her heavy load, and he pushed down the accelerator. He didn't even wait to hear the details before saying,

"We'll get her back."

The storm clouds lingering ahead at the horizon took on a new and ominous meaning.

X

Damon paced the floor of the Gilbert house, wearing a grooved path in the wood in front of the fireplace. _Feed. Be free. Feast. Enjoy. Be free._ Eve's voice purred inside his skull, caressing the edges of his brain and blurring his thoughts. He kept his body in motion because the pumping adrenaline helped him cling to his anger even against the waves of peace promised by The Voice. Stefan had already succumbed to sitting again, head in his hands and back bowed.

Klaus sat at the counter in the Gilbert kitchen with a sheet of paper and a pencil, expanding out a map of the town and its surrounding woods that he had created from memory. If Damon was inclined to be impressed by Originals, he would have been so now.

He had created a reconnaissance hub and had sent his hybrids out in a grid-like formation to search the town. His phone rested on the counter, and every few minutes, it rang. He would listen intently, offer a new instruction, and then jot down the update on the map. In place of his temper and sarcasm, he had taken on cold lethality. Dangerous though it was, Damon trusted him with this.

"I should be out there looking for them." Alaric walked down the stairs, changed from his teaching attire to jeans and boots. "Jeremy and Elena. They're both my responsibility."

"You can't do anything out there that a bunch of nearly invincible hybrids can't do," Damon said. "Except die. Not exactly useful right now."

"I have my ring."

"I don't have time to go traipsing across town to get your corpse, Ric. You're just going to have to save your dead-damsel-in-distress fantasies for a time when I am more able to fulfill them." The snark burned the inside of his mouth, tasting wrong, but he forced one of his sardonic smiles. Alaric walked toward him and shook his head.

"You're not fooling anybody, you know." Ric said it quietly, but it still made Damon's stomach flop unpleasantly. He did not like anyone to see through him. "How is your head?"

Damon knew Alaric was asking him a personal question deliberately, trying to keep him grounded. He appreciated the gesture.

"Loud."

"Sorry." Alaric walked into the kitchen, willing to risk the wrath of Klaus in order to see the map. Damon glanced over at Stefan who was pushing his hands against his temples so hard that the skin was bruising and healing in a continuous ten-minute cycle.

"We're not going to be able to stop Eve. She's too powerful. I'm so…" Stefan looked up, red veins snaking all around his eyes and fangs extended. "Thirsty. She wants us to feed. We cannot beat her. She wants us to feed."

The repetitive refrain joined in rhythm with the voice pounding in Damon's skull. He bit the inside of his cheek, using the pain to hold himself apart from the hypnotic bliss of the words.

"You've got to hold it together, brother," Damon muttered. He moved two steps forward without even realizing it and braced himself against the arm of the couch. If Eve's voice had been a loop before, now it felt like a part of his pulsing heartbeat, a refrain drumming out its tempo inside of every inch of him.

"I'm trying," Stefan murmured.

The minutes crawled by, and Alaric started making phone calls himself, speaking in hushed tones to the Winchesters. Damon could hear Dean's rough burr through the phone from across the room; they were making progress towards Mystic Falls as quickly as they could, and they had the phoenix ash. In another world, Damon would have stormed out of this house and busted in on Bonnie, demanding she and the old woman cook up their spell instantly. Action would have been his antidote to the deep well of fear in his stomach.

Now he clung to the arm of a couch and tried not to rip Ric's throat out and drink the hot blood.

Someone knocked on the front door, and without waiting for someone closer to do it, Klaus strode to it. He pulled it open.

There was blood. Damon's senses went wild, eclipsing any ability to process what he was seeing. He reacted to the blood before his brain recognized that it was not human, and he felt his fangs extend hungrily. He took a few stumbling steps closer and then steadied himself, gripping the stair railing. Only then could he see what was at the door.

One of Klaus's hybrids stood on the porch, blood splattered on his face, streaked on his arms, and stained on his clothes. His white-blonde hair pressed red to his skull. His whole body trembled.

"Klaus, sir," he said as way of a greeting, looking down at the ground. "Tony is dead."

"Tell me what happened." Klaus stepped aside to allow the hybrid to come into the house, but as he took a step forward, his bloody body stopped as if hit by an invisible wall. Damon let out a small sigh of relief; Elena was still alive, and this hybrid was not invited inside.

Klaus cursed under his breath and stepped out onto the porch instead. Damon watched with surprise as Klaus put a reassuring hand on the hybrid's shoulder. Under his sire's touch, his quivering calmed, and he was able to form words.

"We found her in the Salvatores' woods. She's…" He trailed off because no word seemed able to encompass what he was feeling. Overcome with shaking again, he could not continue until Klaus looked him dead in the eyes.

"I don't want to compel you, James. Tell me what happened."

Damon could not have anticipated the almost-regret in Klaus's tone. Perhaps he needed the familial bond of his hybrids more than he let on in his power-hungry statements. Whatever caused the reluctance, Klaus obviously did not want to compel his hybrid.

James sucked in a few deep breaths, never taking his eyes off of Klaus. "She called us abominations, and she ripped off Tony's head. There was no struggle. Just pulled it clean off. And then she…" He hesitated again. "She ate him."

Damon's stomach flopped in a queasy circle.

"She said to tell you that her children are the only predators, and that yours must become prey."

Klaus did not answer for long seconds, and the lack of conversation made the voice inside Damon's head suddenly reverberate louder.

"Thank you for your report," Klaus said with foreboding calm. "Begin calling your brothers and sisters and tell them to stand down and meet me here. The porch ought to be able to hold almost all of you. Southern architecture and all."

"Okay." James sounded small. Klaus turned and walked back into the house, closing the door behind him. His face twisted into an angry sneer.

"She thinks she can kill my hybrids and take my doppelgänger?" Though he spoke aloud, he spoke to himself. "She thinks she can stop me, and I am about to show her how wrong she is."

He looked up now. "Damon. Call your little witch and tell her that I need her here immediately."

Damon raised his eyebrows. No amount of internal voice or crisis could turn him into someone who took Klaus's orders like that.

"No. If you want to interrupt the person who is trying to figure out how to put an end to all of this, do it yourself."

"Your self-centeredness knows no bounds." To have Klaus sound genuinely disappointed in him surprised him, but he did not have the mental space for self-reflection right now. He was barely holding himself together over the voices in his head, and the small comfort that Elena was alive could not banish all the fear balled up inside of him.

Klaus stalked off to the kitchen, phone in hand, and Damon turned back into the living room. Stefan had not moved from his pained position, but Alaric had moved further away, occupying a space by the window. He looked out into the pouring rain. Damon walked over and joined him.

"So we're trusting Klaus with a plan to save Elena," Alaric observed aloud. Damon noticed his friend's attempt to keep accusation out of his voice.

"He's more powerful than the rest of us." He ordinarily made a point of not explaining himself to anyone, but for Alaric, he tried. "Not to mention him not being able to hear her voice, which I am incredibly jealous about. She's not my favorite song."

"No jokes right now, Damon. Be serious."

"Serious," Damon grimaced. "Alright. I'm terrified that we don't have a better plan than waiting for some hunters to get back with some bird ashes, which we're going to somehow figure out a way to use, but we know Elena's alive if undead things can't get in this house."

"You think Klaus can beat this Mother of All?"

Damon paused to consider it. "I don't know. All I know is that one way or another, we are getting Elena back. Even if all the rest of us have to burn for it to happen."

The possibility of them dying to rescue Elena had not occurred to him until this moment, but as soon as he said the words, he knew he meant them. Realizing he would sacrifice not only himself but the people around him to save her was an ugly moment. Self-sacrifice was admirable; slaughtering others at the altar was not.

"Elena wouldn't want her friends to die for her," Stefan spoke from the couch now.

"I don't give a damn what Elena wants."

Damon didn't understand why other people seemed to give her wishes such credence. She was a teenage human. If over a hundred years on Earth had taught him anything, it was how quickly someone like that could lose her life, snuffed out before she had a chance to even know what she wanted. The other thing he had learned in over a hundred years was how great it was to live.

He had sailed on yachts with charismatic strangers, had danced the waltz in Milan and bumped and ground to club music in Los Angeles, and watched the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico. The taste of hundreds of women lingered in his memory; he could lick his lips and imagine their tang still lingered there. In his closet, he had tee shirts from locales all around the country and from every decade hanging beside a Confederate soldier's uniform now worth a lot of money. Only after letting your life get full like that could you realize how much a teenager did not know what she was giving up when she opted to die for someone else.

He wanted Elena to live because he knew how much life was out there.

Klaus walked into the living room. He emanated anger. "Change of plans. My brother is home, and he has the audacity to challenge me."

"It's a trap," Stefan replied. Klaus all but rolled his eyes at him.

"Brilliant insight, Mr. Salvatore. While I appreciate and value your stunning intellect, I am already aware that this a trap. However, we are going to walk into it because Eve has promised to kill my doppelgänger if we do not."

"Okay. Let's go." Stefan stood up. Damon looked at Klaus, and Klaus looked back. His eyes made it clear exactly what needed to be said. Damon took a deep breath.

"I'll be out in a moment," he told Klaus.

"I suppose I'll just go onto the porch and count to twenty very slowly, hoping that the bitch does not get impatient and destroy my only way of making hybrids. I'm sure nothing could be more important than you breaking the news to your brother gently," Klaus said.

He walked out. Alaric followed, a risky move under any circumstances, but there was nothing Damon could do about it right now.

Damon turned to Stefan. "You can't come."

Even as he said the words, guilt filled in his chest, swelling up. His little brother's eyes were haunted. A thousand demons raged inside Stefan right now. Damon knew how hard Stefan had fought just to stand up a second ago, battling Eve's voice, the thrumming bloodlust, and the relentless regret.

"I can help. Damon, I'm going with you if you're going to face Her." Stefan's face set stubbornly, even as his pupils oscillated inside in his irises. Just watching them made Damon dizzy.

Damon remembered when they were younger, and he had gone off to fight for the Confederacy, leaving his brother behind. He remembered when they were this same age, and he had gone off to fight the Nazis, again leaving Stefan behind. He supposed he would have the same expression if he were the one who always got left behind. A soft human place inside of him made him want to tell Stefan some truths: _I'm leaving you behind to protect you. I always leave you behind to protect you. If you don't know that I'd risk myself over you every time, you haven't been paying attention for the last one hundred and fifty years_.

Instead he shrugged. "You're unpredictable. You can't control yourself even when you're not near her. You're a liability."

Stefan drooped visibly, defeated by one more set of words convincing him he was no hero. "You're right."

They looked at each other for a long moment, and Damon reached out first. He pulled Stefan into an embrace, and in the familiar circled arms, he wondered if he would die today. Facing down the other struggles over the years had not been like this. Eve represented Apocalypse for monsters like themselves, an absolute end to the humanity within their bodies. If they could not defeat her, they might be feeling this way for the last time. He memorized the smell of his brother, the hard curve of his muscle, the tremor across the forearm resting on his back. He memorized it in case this moment was the last of its kind.

"Be safe, brother," Stefan said into Damon's shoulder. Damon closed his eyes and let the words seep into him like a good luck charm.

"I'll bring Elena home."

He did not make the words a promise.

X

Eve dropped her facade after Elena had been with her for several hours. Under the pretty human trappings she wore, she was anything but. Her true being horrified Elena. Eve still had a humanoid shape, but the grey flesh slipped on the bones and muscles, moving loosely and freely when its owner did, and her eyes were hollow dark holes in the flesh. Their quasi-triangular shape added to the unearthliness. Elena could not bear to look at her.

When she had arrived at the old Lockwood estate, she had found Jeremy crudely trussed to a tree. A wound on his neck still ran bloody, and Elijah had wiped the corner of his own mouth upon seeing her. In that moment, she realized she was being taken prisoner by something that no longer had access to humanity.

Now she was sitting on a familiar couch, looking around at the Mikaelson living room. Nothing held her here except the horror of what she had seen when they had moved through the woods at the edge of town. When Eve had eaten the hybrid… Elena swallowed hard to force rising vomit back down her throat. It would be the most grotesque thing she ever saw even if she lived a hundred years.

Elijah stood in the doorway of his own space, looking nothing like himself. The red veins framed his eyes still, and he looked longingly at Jeremy, whose unconscious body lay slumped in the corner of the room. Earlier, she had tried to go to him, but Elijah had stopped her. She was not allowed to leave this couch. Clenching her trembling hands together, she tried to breathe in and out slowly. She needed to find her voice and try to reach out to Elijah. He had once been the most understanding member of his family.

"Elijah?" Embarrassed by her own fear, she dug her nails into her skin, trying to distract herself enough to be understood.

He turned to look at her. "Yes?"

"Please let me go to Jeremy. He's hurt."

"He is of no importance." Though Elijah did not finish with the words "to Mother," they floated in the air unsaid.

"Not to you. But he's my brother, Elijah. My brother. Please. I won't try to escape. I promise. Just let me sit with him."

Elijah's face flickered as she spoke of her brother. She watched him lift upright, shoulders softening for a moment. He took a few steps toward her, and she saw him in his body again. She could not have put words to what she was seeing, but she could see that he had control of himself for a moment. His unclouded eyes closed.

"I cannot promise not to hurt him. Mother has graciously taken away my thirst for your blood, but I am so very hungry." He had genuine regret in his voice. He looked back over at Jeremy again, and a hiss escaped him as his fangs extended and his eyes reddened. She had never seen Elijah lose control like that until today.

"Please. Even if you're going to feed, I'd rather be with him than not," she pleaded. They stared at one another, and he nodded slowly.

"I will try not to kill your brother, Elena."

 _What about yours?_ She wanted to ask, but she dared not. Pushing her legs to work, she hurried over to Jeremy and knelt down beside him. Blood streaked his ripped football jersey, and his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. She touched his face first, feeling the roughness of cheeks in need of a shave, and then checked down his body for broken bones. He hissed without waking when she ran her hands along his sides. Perhaps he had broken ribs.

"I'm here, Jer," she told him tearily as she checked his legs for injury. "I'm so sorry. I never meant for anything like this to happen to you. I just wanted to keep you safe."

Hearing her own voice soothed her in the quiet terror of the room, so she kept talking, murmuring little nothings as she held his hand.

"You were so happy in Denver. You'd call and tell me about your new friends, that girl you were dating. I got to worry about normal things for you. Like if she was nice or a slut," Elena giggled but her eyes filled with tears, blurring her vision entirely. "I only ever wanted to worry about normal things for you."

The weeping crept up on her so gently that she was crying on Jeremy's chest before she realized she had stopped talking. She cried for her hopeless inability to save anyone she loved from this monster. She cried for her hopeless inability to ever save anyone she loved.

"You should know that Mother wants to make the world better," Elijah spoke suddenly, quiet but firm. "Humankind has had a long dawn with creatures like us in the shadows, living as lurkers in our own world. She wants to see us have our turn in the spotlight. She is not evil."

Elena heard the terrible slurp of Eve consuming the hybrid bubble up from her memory.

"She wants what all Mothers want for their children. Happiness."

Elena sat up and shook her head. "You're human in all the ways that count. You don't want to see everything humans represent destroyed."

"Humans have wars on their hands, the hunger pains of hundreds of poor children, the extinction of many innocent species. You've borne killers who rape children and dismember their corpses. You climb into steel contraptions and run over pedestrians. What have monsters ever done that is as monstrous as what humans do every day?

Elena closed her eyes against the picture of humanity he painted. She thought of the TV commercials she had watched all her life of starving children in Africa, looking up with wide, hungry eyes, and how her father had quickly changed channels, not wanting to feel guilty during dinner. She changed the channels too. Elijah was not as wrong as she wanted him to be, and yet she knew he did not really feel this way. She knew that someone besides her would be able to articulate why humanity deserved to live in spite of its flaws, but she struggled for words.

"You're right about all of those things, but we're also the ones who make art and music and work to try to understand why every atom is a part of the universe and have family…" She lit up, knowing that topic was her best shot. "Family, like your brothers and Rebekah and Klaus. There won't be any families if Eve destroys the world the way we know it."

While she spoke, he listened intently until she said the word "destroys." His face hardened, and he retreated again, away from himself and back into the creature Eve had wearing his skin.

"Mother would never destroy the world. She's here to save us. Klaus need only stand down, and he will be allowed to live with us in Paradise," he said coldly, standing up and walking away. He exited the room without glancing back. Her window to reach him had snapped shut so quickly that she had barely pulled her fingers out before they got crushed.

Elena tried to think of her options for escape, but the situation was futile. She could not move Jeremy, and she would not leave him. She sagged on the floor to wait.

She had been waiting to be rescued for several hours when she heard Klaus's voice from somewhere in the house.

Unashamed, she began to cry again: this time, with relief.

X

Her voice roared in Damon's head, drowning out all other thought and pushing so hard from the inside so hard that it blurred his eyes. As he listened to Klaus and Elijah speak, he could barely make out their words. _Eat. Feed. Be happy. Feast_. Indulge. He gripped the bottom railing of the staircase to steady himself against the onslaught.

"Conspiring against me is very bad form, Elijah. You were daggered in a box for centuries, and I must say, you were better company then than you have been since the creature took you over."

How Klaus managed to sound so flippant in the face of danger and overwhelming likelihood of death… Damon doubled over as the voice began to pierce, a needle penetrating his brain.

He saw the headlights glow through the window and the rain behind him as it pulled into the driveway. From the shape, he recognized Dean Winchester's Impala and felt a shameful flood of relief. The phoenix ash was here. He had no idea what they could do with it, how it could save Elena, how he was even going to be able to take another step forward when his head was throbbing this way… But it felt like something in the middle of the nothing they mostly had.

"Mother wants peace, and you will not let her have it, Niklaus." Elijah sounded clipped as always. Damon forced his blurry gaze up to see Sam and Dean walking into the foyer through the open front door.

"Where's Caroline?" Klaus asked as he looked them over once.

"She's got a bit of a headache. We left her with a friend," Dean said tersely. Damon felt another renting scream-like pulse of Feast in his head and knew exactly why Caroline had not been willing to come into this house. He was no use to anyone here. His hand slipped off the rail, and he nearly fell over.

He felt the footsteps of his Mother inside of him, thrumming with his heartbeat, even though he could not hear them over her voice. Raising his watery eyes, he saw her descending the staircase. Her human form was blonde, beautiful, and the glow of her eyes was almost purple. She touched his head as she reached him, running a hand over his hair as softly as silk. When she touched him, he no longer heard her voice in his head. Sudden blissful clarity struck in its place. It felt like a lifetime since he had heard silence.

"My child, you fight so hard against me." Her voice was silk and honey. He melted under the touch.

"You must be Eve," Sam Winchester spoke first.

Eve smiled benevolently. "Yes, Sam. You may call me Eve since I am not your mother. I'm pleased to have you all here. We need to talk. All of us."

She lifted her hand from Damon's head, and sadness engulfed him. He missed her touch.

"You know us?" Sam said.

"You're the Winchesters, stoppers of the Apocalypse, defiers of God," she said it without reverence. She turned her gaze to each person in the room. "You are, of course, Niklaus Mikaelson. A human name in spite of your desire to be something great. An abomination and bastardization of my creation."

Damon felt his head nodding along with her words. Klaus was awful, a hybrid species that should not exist. She was right.

"Well you're not wrong," Dean muttered. "Why do you want to talk to us? If you know anything about us, you know we want to kill you."

Damon did not remember how he could have wanted to kill Mother. She was an absolute good. She sensed his thought and smiled over at him, smoothing a place on his shoulder where his shirt had a wrinkle. He smiled back.

She ignored Dean's statement and continued on her own trajectory instead. "I want you here so that I can ask you to stand down. I want nothing for my children that God did not have for his first. You were supposed to perish in fiery Apocalypse, and then my children were to inherit the Earth. It is our turn."

Sam Winchester looked stricken; the gears in his head seemed to be spinning. The other Winchester snorted.

"If we weren't going to let God's plan destroy the world, why would we let you? Get real, bitch."

Elijah and Damon hissed in unison. How dare he use language like that to address Mother.

"And you." She again ignored Dean and turned to Klaus. "You must understand that you are outside of the natural order. I have been a part of this creation since its beginning. I belong here. What your hundreds of years compared to my thousands? Put away your hubris, and accept my superiority. You can live amongst my children in peace."

"Superiority." Klaus actually smiled. "And you dare to accuse me of hubris."

"I do not want to kill you. That would be giving you credence as an enemy. You're not really my enemy. You're a wayward son in need of guidance. Elijah, tell your brother how much I want to help him."

Elijah stepped forward. "Mother only wants what is best for all of us."

"Damon?" She asked another child to speak for her.

"We have been wrong," Damon said. Mother looked so lovely, and her voice sounded so nice.

"Well, that's some Stepford wives shit we're not buying, but you can work that out amongst yourselves. We're here for Elena. She has no part in all of this. She's just a human," Dean said.

"Not quite," Mother motioned to Elijah, and he exited the room. "She is more than just the honey that brought all the little flies here. She's also the doppelgänger whose blood possesses the magic to create the abominations."

"Hybrids." Klaus's vocal chords vibrated harshly on the words.

"Yes, hybrids. She's more than just a human, and she must die."

Dean and Sam both lurched forward suddenly, knives in their hands, and Damon recognized black and red powder on the blades. Without thought, he lunged toward them, but Mother just laughed and waved her hand in the air. The knives flew upwards and lodged themselves in the ceiling overhead.

"Silly boys."

The Winchesters stood side by side, frozen by their sudden impotence, and Elijah walked in with Elena in tow. Damon looked at her and felt his insides rattle. Mother's perfection suddenly scraped against the sandpapery edges of something else.

"Damon," Elena breathed out his name, and the roughness pressed harder against his insides. Mother was perfect. He loved Elena. The two ideas rubbed together.

He saw the relief on her face as she looked at him.

"I knew you'd come for me," she said, and all the innocence and trust in those dark eyes undid him. He loved her, and every other feeling inside of him slipped and melted away. If he had possessed the power to make his feet move, he would have stepped to her, no matter what Mother said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam Winchester lunge forward with another knife in hand and plunge it into Mother's shoulder. She turned her body towards him, face unflinching, and then her features shifted. She shrank slightly shorter, rounded out a bit, and her face aged and changed. The brunette hair transformed into auburn, and when she spoke, she had a twangy gravel of whiskey and cigarettes in her tone.

Sam stumbled backwards. Damon saw Dean's face harden. They both stiffened then, frozen, and Damon realized she had finally used whatever primal magic she controlled to cut off their movement. They had never served as a threat to her; she had been toying with them, a cat with a mouse tucked under her food dish for later.

 _He loved Elena. Mother was wrong._

"You bitch." Dean spat out the words.

Eve laughed. "I considered Mary Winchester as a skin, but Sam here might not have recognized her. He didn't get much of a mother's love until Ellen came along. Do you miss her, Sam? I know she died horribly so that you might live."

Damon did not know who Ellen was, but if anyone had ever loved her, she had probably not carried such malice behind her face. He clung to the thought that he loved Elena, had to protect Elena, even as the waves of loyalty to Mother crashed against his insides.

Klaus moved in suddenly. Damon had nearly forgotten the Original's presence until he saw him lunge forward, a blur moving in towards Elena. Damon had no time to react, but Elijah countered. He put his hands on his brother's shoulders. They strained against one another. Released, Elena ran to Damon. He pulled her against his chest and felt the rapid fluttery beat of her heart.

 _He loved Elena. Mother was evil._

He reiterated reality in his head, clinging to clarity.

"Elijah, do not let him interfere with our plans," Mother said. The pair of Original brothers hissed, turning from the gentlemanly personas they projected to the savage beings they began as. Klaus wrenched his brother sideways, sending him careening into a column. The wood cracked down the middle. Elijah sprang back at him, fangs extended. The two brothers became a blurred mass of teeth, sinewy muscle, and blood. Damon could not tell whose blood emerged from the blurred fight that careened through the window and onto the porch.

The spray of glass and blood littered the floor.

"Now..." Mother turned away from the fight on the porch and scanned her gaze over Dean, Sam, Elena and Damon. "To take care of his doppelganger."

Elena tightened her grip on Damon's arm. He felt her fingers pulling at his arm hair, creating a sensation of almost pain. He had seen her in terrible situations before, and yet the palpable fear in the air now topped it all. She must have seen the creature underneath the human veneer Mother wore, and that creature must be horrible.

"Damon," Eve's voice was sugar, sweet and addictive. "My boy, you've got to kill her."

"No!" One of the Winchesters let out a strained cry, but Damon did not look at them. He felt Elena's touch on his arm, and he felt Mother's voice stroking him, urging him. Mother spoke to him from the inside out; he felt what she wanted from him before she said it.

 _He loved Elena. Mother wanted to hurt her._

"Elena, get away from me." Could that be his own voice, so stripped of sarcasm and devilment, so ragged and frightened?

 _Mother wanted him to listen to her. She wanted him to hurt Elena._

Elena scrambled a few steps back but kept herself close, looking right at him. In those eyes sat a wellspring of concern and trust. She worried for him even as he suddenly became all too aware of the tantalizing scent of her blood.

 _He loved Elena. He loved Mother._

"You're fighting me. You're standing in the way of your own happiness. I can bring you peace if you'll let go. Without the doppelganger, Klaus will be no threat to us," Mother crooned. Her voice was room temperature bourbon on a cold day, an angelic lullaby on a frightful night. He looked over at her, and her beauty made his insides soften.

 _He loved Mother. He had to do whatever she wanted of him._

"Damon, no, listen to me," Elena spoke now, five-feet-six-inches of human staring down impending supernatural doom. "You've got to fight her. You can't let her control you. I know you. I know you'd never hurt me. Remember when you were dying?"

"Yes."

He remembered the excruciating pain of the werewolf bite eating him up. The pure poison pumping through his veins had weakened him to a sub-human state. In the hallucinations and agony, he remembered Elena sitting by his side. She had held his hand and kissed his lips and made the prospect of death a thousand times more painful as she reminded him of what he would leave behind.

 _He loved Mother. He loved Elena._

"You told me you loved me, remember? You told me you wouldn't change anything in all your years because it might risk us not meeting." She closed the steps between them, putting her hands on his chest. He wondered how he could have ever thought she and Katherine Pierce looked alike; Elena's beauty glowed with goodness as she faced him down.

 _He loved Elena._

"You have to be strong enough to do this." Mother's voice purred, but it held an edge now, a razor-sharp bite to her words.

 _He loved Mother._

"I didn't tell you then. I didn't understand it, didn't want to understand it," Elena tripped over her words, looking him in the eyes. "But Damon, I love you too. I try not to. I try so damn hard not to want you. You're stubborn and selfish and short-sighted, but you're so much better than you see, than you let anyone see. Except me. I'm the only one who gets to see the real you. I know you won't hurt me. You'd never hurt me. I trust you."

Damon had imagined Elena telling him that she loved him in a hundred different ways. Embarrassing dreams of domestic felicity had crept up on him at night, leaving him with broken images of whispered affirmations, road trips, and soft kisses. They had kissed before; he had memorized the taste of her hot mouth and the feel of her body pressed against his. But he had always known that love - acknowledged and affectionate and pure - could never belong to him. He slid his hands up to cradle her face, memorizing this moment.

 _He loved Elena._ The textured edges of the realities battling inside of him rubbed against one another again.

Elena leaned up into him, and his heart surged at the sweetness of a kiss he did not have to work for, a kiss freely offered. Her lips brushed against his.

"That was a very endearing show of human power. Misters Winchester, I am sure you are feeling in awe of the power of love," Mother no longer sounded like silk but like twin pieces of styrofoam being pressed together. "But that is enough."

Mother's voice changed completely now, becoming as big and expansive as thunder: "Damon Salvatore, kill the doppelganger."

Her voice filled him up, pressed against his skin from within. The three words "kill the doppelganger" swelled inside of him. They crawled along his nerves and burrowed into the nooks and crannies of his psyche, finding his love for Elena and blotting over it with their dark command.

 _Mother says to kill the doppelganger. He loved Mother._

Damon tightened his hands around Elena's fragile throat and twisted. The snap nearly severed head from body.

He let the corpse hit the floor before turning his gaze to his wonderful benefactor.

"I've killed the doppelganger, Mother."

"Good boy." She smiled, and Damon warmed under her gaze.

 _He loved Mother._


End file.
